Response to Biermann: pilot randomised controlled trial results for evaluating the teaching utility of the AIDA diabetes software simulator--an overview.

289 Dear Editor: In a recent issue of the journal, Dr. Biermann1 raised various issues regarding the randomised controlled trial (RCT) assessment of diabetes simulation programs. As the results of a pilot RCT have recently been published,2 making use of our proposed protocol,3,4 we thought it might be helpful to overview here the key study findings. AIDA is a freeware computer program that permits the interactive simulation of plasma insulin and blood glucose profiles for demonstration, teaching, self-learning, and research purposes. It has been made freely available on the World Wide Web as a non-commercial contribution to continuing diabetes education. In the 8 years since its Internet launch in March/ April 1996, over 400,000 visits have been logged to the AIDA Web pages and over 80,000 copies of the program have been downloaded, gratis. The software has been described in detail previously elsewhere in the literature,5,6 as well as in this journal.7–10 Independent reviews of AIDA and its Web-based sister application, AIDA online, can be found elsewhere in the literature.11–17 With AIDA our attention recently has been focused on evaluating the program, and we have been trying to formally assess the utility of the software by conducting a variety of studies—ranging from qualitative assessments to more quantitative studies. Some issues surrounding the use of RCTs for evaluating diabetes simulators have been discussed recently by us in a previous issue of this journal.18 SUBJECTS AND METHODS