Simulating glycosylated hemoglobin (HbA1c) levels in diabetes using an interactive educational virtual diabetes patient simulator.

In 1996, an interactive educational diabetes simulator called AIDA was released without charge on the Internet as a noncommercial contribution to continuing diabetes education. Over the past 5 years, over 100,000 people have visited the AIDA Web pages at http://www.2aida.org and over 25,000 copies of the program have been downloaded free-of-charge. Previous Diabetes Information Technology & WebWatch columns have described various user feedback comments about the AIDA software. This current column overviews the method applied for modelling glycosylated hemoglobin (HbA1c) levels within an updated version of the AIDA program (v4.3). The result seems to be a useful and novel addition to the diabetes simulations, providing a parameter with which most users will be familiar, and able to relate. It is expected that the HbA1c indicator may prove useful in enhancing the educational value of the diabetes simulations.