A Mobile Collaboration with The College Of William And Mary

Panmedia Ltd recently collaborated with a class at The College of William and Mary on a project to build a mobile app targeting tech-savvy users with diabetes. The application lets users better manage the disease and is built on the android platform. The application is compatible with mobile devices running version 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) and later.

The collaboration was the idea of Daniel Graham, a Jamaican graduate student and teaching assistant at William and Mary who has worked with Panmedia before as a mobile consultant. As the TA of a class in Software Engineering, he thought it was a good idea to give the students real world experience.

He spoke to Panmedia CEO Knolly Moses, who said yes immediately. They agreed that the diabetes app would be both appropriate for the Caribbean given the high incidence of diabetes here and useful as a tool for those with the disease. They also agreed that Panmedia would act in two capacities. One as the real world client for whom the William and Mary students would develop the app, and two, offer oversight and guidance in the development of professional, real world applications.

Panmedia has developed several mobile apps across all platforms, so our IT department was happy to embrace the experience. “It gave us a unique opportunity to work online with developers from abroad and to test our own knowledge and experience,” says Rhodrey Shaw, a mobile developer at Panmedia. Both teams used the Microsoft Team Foundation Server, Skype and email to communicate and facilitate the project.

The application gives users with Type 1 Diabetes Mellitus (diabetics who are insulin dependent) a tool to manage their Diabetes. Users can easily and intuitively keep track of the amount of insulin taken, get recommendations on how much insulin to take based on what was eaten, and get reminders to take their insulin. App users can also see a graph of insulin taken over time as well as track their glucose levels. In addition to tracking and storing the glucose levels on the smartphone, the application also stored this information in the cloud. Storing the information in the cloud allowed users to access their data from any Internet enabled device, including: smart TVs, tablets and desktops.

When asked about the experience working with Panmedia, Daniel said: "The Panmedia team has an exciting vision for mobile applications in the Caribbean and we are grateful that they allowed us to be apart of it. International collaborations like these, provide an opportunity to showcase the talent of William and Mary students and how they can impact the world."