Health2Sync Bluetooth Dongle HB-8201 for Diabetes Management (1)

Inexpensive tool that helped me monitor my diabetes. Coupled with the Embrace Talk glucose meter, I can transfer all my readings quickly and easily. Coupled with the App from Healthcare, I can make any changes to my diet, exercise, or schedule. I decreased my diabetes numbers from 10.9 to 6.7 in 90 days.

This does what it is needed to doHowever if you want every reading downloaded this doesn’t do itIt will only reading in a certain time frame ie breakfast lunch dinnerTook nine reading only imported five

I purchased this item and after only a month it stopped working (used it 2 times to upload my readings). I have messaged customer service several times with no response. What a waste of money. I will be looking for a different meter.

Having this device makes it so much easier to be consistent with glucose checking and tracking, because it can turn pretty much any meter with a headphone jack data port into a bluetooth-enabled meter (the list of compatible devices is on the manufacturer’s website if you want to check). The device works as advertised on their website, so you can sync all the glucose readings from your meter to your phone at a later date instead of entering the readings manually each time. The device is small enough to stuff into your glucose meter pouch, and comes with a 2.5mm adapter for if your meter does not have a standard sized (3.5mm) headphone jack. They picked an adapter which has bulkier plastic housing than necessary, but this way you don’t have to worry about figuring out if you need to order a separate adapter yourself.The initial setup takes a bit more time than I’d have liked, and requires an online account, but once that is done then using the device is pretty simple. You basically just plug the bluetooth dongle into the meter, press the button on the bluetooth dongle that starts the green light blinking, press the plus button in the bottom-center of the app to add readings, and follow the prompts to sync. If there are instructions particular to an individual model of meter, such as making sure the meter is off before syncing, the app gives those instructions in the syncing prompts.The app itself is easy to use, and has several types of built-in graphing and tracking capabilities. Once readings are downloaded, the app automatically assigns a before/after meal label to each reading based on the meal schedule you set up with the app, and uses this information when graphing data. If you don’t like the way the app automatically labels a reading, you can both relabel individual readings once downloaded, as well as change the schedule itself within the settings. You can also set what you want the app to flag as a high or a low reading for both before and after meals. Since you can also add glucose readings manually, you can test the app out without purchasing anything first.While I’m pretty happy with the app’s built-in functions, there are a couple of things I’d love to be able to change. The app is able to link before and after-meal readings together so you can track glucose changes during meals, but it only is able to do this if the readings are within the same calendar day; if you add a before-dinner reading at 11pm and an after-dinner reading at 1am, sometimes it’ll try to pair the 1am post-dinner reading with the pre-dinner reading 22 hours later. If you label post-midnight readings as “small hours” or “bedtime” instead, you shouldn’t have that problem. However, doing this means that if I have a post-dinner reading at 1am, the app won’t display that reading as part of a meal comparison, and that’s a problem for people who work 3rd shift or who have circadian rhythm issues.It’s also important to know that the device will download all blood glucose readings stored in the meter, no matter how old they are, and will not allow you to delete them from the app once this is done. I suspect this is because some meters are not advanced enough to recognize that a blood glucose reading has already been downloaded, so if that reading went missing from the app, the meter would just re-upload it again. While that is not ideal, you can mark double-check or control solution readings as “other” in the app so that you are able to recognize them and separate them out. If you type a glucose reading into the app manually instead of downloading it from a meter, you can still delete it.Finally, if you use multiple brands or models of meters, or if you want to regularly use multiple bluetooth dongles instead of just one, the setup is more complicated. If you are using two of the same kind of meter, like two Freestyle Lites, you just tell the app you’re using a Freestyle Lite the first time you sync and you’re all set. However, if you synced with a Freestyle and then went to sync with something different, like a OneTouch, you’d first have to change the settings to tell the app you will be using a OneTouch, and then you’d have to change the settings back before you sync with the Freestyle again. There’s a similar problem if you use two bluetooth dongles; if you only use one bluetooth dongle for several meters, that bluetooth dongle will stay paired to the app permanently, but if you are using one bluetooth dongle and pair the app to a second one, the app essentially forgets all about the first bluetooth dongle. Both bluetooth dongles will be listed in the app, but when you try to reselect the first bluetooth dongle, the app will make you do the bluetooth pairing steps all over again.For me, these caveats are relatively small considering my alternatives are a meter my insurance won’t pay for or a bluetooth meter that is inaccurate, and having this device makes my whole glucose checking routine so much easier. The problems may be too big for some people, but if the most important thing for you is to be able to track your numbers without actually having to take the time to enter in those numbers yourself, this is a great option.

I literally just received my dongle and put in my meter to sync it. My meter receive a new battery and so did my dongle. Yet I get a message that my device battery is low. My batteries were just purchased so they were new also. $30 for something that doesn't work???? Not happy.