Urgent funding to develop “ODD” – A web+mobile application to prevent and control Diabetes.

Dear all

Diabetes is one of the fastest growing and deadliest diseases in the world today. According to International Diabetes Federation’s Diabetes Atlas 2017, there are 425 million people with diabetes in the world. The number will rise to 642 million by 2040. Among the affected people 1 in 2 remains undiagnosed. Globally, 1 in 11 adults have diabetes and whopping 12% of global health expenditure is spent on diabetes.Back in 90s and 2000s, diabetes was not a prevalent disease in Bangladesh. But it grew swiftly after 2000 and it is now one of the fastest growing diseases in the country.

My mother is a type 2 diabetic patient with high blood pressure. She has been trying very hard to maintain a normal life – following diabetic meal charts, taking regular physical exercise and shots of insulin along with other medications.But things don’t run smoothly all the time. Sometimes when she tries to dine with us or with the guest – she gets a massive surge in the blood sugar level for taking sugar enriched foods and if she doesn’t join us or don’t feel okay to cook for herself and depends on packed foods– she remains undernourished and her blood sugar level falls drastically. This fluctuation in blood sugar level is very harmful for diabetic patients, as a result she developed cataract in both her eyes and suffered from abnormality in kidney and heart functions. Fortunately she was treated and now she’s recovered.

With the experience with my mother and other diabetic patients, we have come to conclusion that Healthy Foods play the most important role in maintaining a healthy life along with taking regular physical exercise and medication.

In developed countries – it’s comparatively easier to get healthy food suitable for diabetic patients. Availability of nutrition specialists, medical insurance to cover consultation expenses, reasonable pricing of food ingredients and transportation, infrastructural advantages etc. – are some of the factors that work behind ensuring proper nutrition for diabetic patients.

Were in developing and underdeveloped countries ensuring healthy food for diabetic patients is a challenge. Insufficient number of nutrition specialists – who are mainly based on only cities, Insufficient personal funding to cover consultation expenses – which many people cannot afford, fluctuating prices of food ingredients and transportation, poor infrastructural etc. – are some of the factors that work as obstacles to ensuring proper nutrition for diabetic patients.

We have planned a way to ensure proper nutrition for diabetic patients all around the world – especially for those living in developing and underdeveloped countries (at the beginning). We’ll run the pilot in Dhaka, Bangladesh and spread it to other cities and countries afterwards.

It’s a 2 component solution. We will introduce -

1. ODD (Online Diabetic Dinner) – a web application with mobile apps and secured payment gateway.

2. A food preparation facility named – CDEF facility (Custom Diabetic Entertainment and Food Facility) to distribute custom meals for diabetic patients when ordered.

These 2 components are described in detail below:

1. ODD will be visible as an interactive Mobile + web application with the following features –

• Non Diabetic Portal: This feature will be for healthy people without diabetes, who are willing to know about diabetes and ways to prevent it before it develops. Useful information, videos, workout plans, food suggestions, info regarding local diabetic association and means to communicate them etc. will be available here. So people without diabetes can get aware of the reasons and prevent it from the early stage. Any Non diabetic person can register and provide info regarding weight, height, choice of food ingredients, name of allergic factors, diseases they are suffering from etc. – to get meal planners or exercise and medication schedule etc.
• Diabetic Portal: This feature will be for only diabetic patients. Here each registered patients can provide info regarding their weight, height, age, daily blood sugar level, choice of food ingredients, name of allergic factors, other diseases they are suffering from etc. – so the ODD’s algorithm can automatically settle and shuffle their meal plans, medication and exercise schedule, notify the user for new events, alarms to take medications on time etc.
• Meal Planner: Both diabetic and Non diabetic people will get weekly food charts with daily itemized food menu – which will be set according the info regarding choice of food ingredients and allergic contents provided during registration. The food planner will propose food items – with their recipe and exact amount of ingredients suitable for the user based on the daily updated blood sugar level and other factors – which will be determined by the algorithm within the app. So the user can prepare the food themselves if they like or make reservation at CDEF to get prepared food on daily basis – to minimize cost and hassle. Users can shuffle the food items according their will or even propose new food recipe for all through this system.
• Medication and Exercise scheduler: It will be the calculator and reminder of daily medicine intake and exercise. Measuring blood sugar level is a painful process still today – we’ll develop a less painful gadget to measure blood sugar and automatically share the reading with ODD and administer insulin in response of the feedback of ODD. We have plan to start designing the gadget right after we materialize ODD and CDEF.
• Online Health & Nutrition Consultancy: We’ll establish and maintain an online consultation center – where a group of experts will be available to direct enquiring people with and without diabetes to prevent and control the disease. The cost of keeping the staff and running the facility will be earned through CDEF.
• Online Order & tracking: Here users can purchase foods and medicine from CDEF through secured payment gateway and initiate recurring bills through their bank accounts and cards, learn about the location of the delivery in real time, get and manage monthly discounts on delivered goods and lots more!

2. CDEF

CDEF Facility or Custom Diabetic Entertainment and Food Facility will be a live kitchen with dining arrangements, packaging and delivery unit for online order delivery, custom exercise area with both gym and Yoga facility, consultation area with nutrition specialists and specialized physicians etc.

We have decided to carry out the project in 2 phase:

Phase – 01: Designing and developing ODD and releasing it as a free web and mobile app – so all who want to use its features totally free – can access and use it to prevent and control diabetes.

Phase – 02: Designing and establishing CDEF Facility to prepare and deliver meals for diabetic and non-diabetic people, provide a nice environment to dine in, take exercise or consult with specialist etc.

To achieve our goal – we’ve to fulfill Phase – 01 first. After the beta testing of ODD is over – we’ll simultaneously start to fundraise to bring Phase – 02 into reality. By the time ODD is ready and the Final version is released we hope to open CDEF Facility as well.

Project Cost Estimation (Phase - 01: Development of ODD):

Total project cost: USD 50,000.00

Breakdown of project cost:

1. Total payable to App developers and designers: 55%

Lead software developer (No. of professional – 01)

Software engineer (No. of professional – 01)

System engineer (No. of professional – 01)

Graphic designer and UI artist (No. of professional – 01)

2. Space and Utility cost: 10.4%

3. Hardware(Later it can be updated as server PC): 14.02%

4. Consultation charges for sessions with Nutrition specialist and Diabetic experts: 12.58%

5. Fund raising and processing fee: 8%

We need this funding to start the development work of ODD.

We eagerly want to make it happen – which will help all the Diabetic patients and non-diabetic population of the world. Without your help – we cannot complete Phase – 01.

I have been maintaining a organization run by freelancers named Systonite since 2015. While Systonite is a constellation of software engineers, web developers, graphic designers, architectural designers and product developers. On behalf of Systonite, I have selected a group of software engineers, UI and Graphic designers, nutritionist, Diabetes specialists & chefs to develop ODD.

We are confident after we finish Phase – 01, we can approach different communities and organizations with a working version of the web application. (Currently I have approached some – but all has refused or kept the matter to a pending state as I couldn't demonstrate any working version). I’m sure if we approach them with a working version - They can easily understand it’s importance and fund us for phase - 02. And when we will successfully finish the 2 phases – we will cover other countries, create custom food database and nutrition facts for specific countries – so the application will be accessible and useful for people all over the world. We will also create low resource and offline edition of ODD – so people in very rural and low internet coverage areas can use the app’s features as well. We also have plans to release ODD as an open source application so that developerscan take part in development to enrich the application for the greater good of humanity.

So dear friends – please help us as much as you can by donating for this great cause. With your financial aid – we will do our best to develop ODD as fast as we can.

Thank you.