 AUGUST 6 • 2020 | 37

HOMECHEF
homechef.com
Overall favorite. Binder 
holds colorful recipe 
cards. Clear directions. 
Appreciated being told 
the cooking difficulty and 
spice levels. A “storage 
timeframe” provided 
guidance to make more 
perishable kits sooner. Meat 
and produce were first-rate. 
Cornbread-crusted 
Mahi-Mahi and Honey-
BBQ Aioli with corn on 
the cob and sweet potato 
wedges. Loved the fish and 
sides.
Beef Meatloaf Marinara 
with red pepper pesto 
cauliflower. An easy 
comfort meal.
Chicken Teriyaki 
Bowl with bok choy and 
edamame. Only “oven-
ready” dinner satisfied and 
came together effortlessly.
Coq au Vin with Bone-
In Chicken. Classic French 
dish included red wine and 
mushrooms. 
Sticky Honey Garlic 
Sesame Steak Strips with 
jasmine rice and baby bok 
choy. Enjoyed cooking with 
bok choy.
Chicken Piccata with 
crispy onion-topped 
tomatoes and zucchini. 
Another delicious meal.

I

t’
s one of those things most 
of us take for granted. Every 
day, without realizing it, our 
bodies make insulin, a hormone 
that regulates blood sugar levels 
and helps keep them from get-
ting too high or too low. 
But the body’
s insulin require-
ments change constantly — and 
that’
s where things get tricky for 
millions of people with Type 
2 diabetes who don’
t produce 
enough insulin on their own. It’
s 
hard for them to know from one 
day to the next how much insu-
lin to take.
“The more insulin-deficient 
we are, the sicker we are,
” 
explains inventor 
Eran Bashan of Ann 
Arbor. “If you can 
bring your blood 
sugar levels to the 
normal range, your 
risk is no different 
than someone with-
out diabetes.
”
The Israeli-born 
engineer co-found-
ed Hygieia (the 
Greek word for 
health) with his 
friend, endocrinol-
ogist Dr. Israel Hodish, who is 
also Israeli. The duo first came 
up with the idea while chatting 
during a Shabbat dinner in 2007. 

They spent years developing 
and perfecting a high-tech insu-
lin management system called 
d-Nav — an app that interprets 
blood sugar readings and acts 
like an “artificial physician” to 
make clinical decisions 
about how much insu-
lin a person should 
take. The system 
is the first FDA-
cleared technology 
that does this.
“Studies have 
shown 90 percent 
of our users have 
improved their 
blood sugar levels 
within 90 days of 
starting the program,
” Dr. 
Hodish said. “We help people 
get the right insulin dose when 
they need it.
” 
Typically, diabetes patients 
who take insulin visit their doc-
tor and are given a specific dose 
until their next appointment. 
In an ideal world, they’
d have 
their blood work analyzed every 
week — but that’
s not practical 
or economical. So, the amount 
of insulin they really need will 
likely fluctuate before that next 
visit. What d-Nav does is pro-
vide on-the-spot information 
to make the necessary adjust-
ments from home. That comes 

in especially handy now during 
COVID-19 and the need for 
social distancing and staying 
home to stay safe.
“If you have diabetes, you’
re at 
a high risk for COVID-19 com-
plications,
” Bashan points 
 out.
To use d-Nav, patients can 
install the app on their phone 
or get a device that has the app 
pre-loaded. They use a finger 
prick or another type of monitor 
to measure blood sugar, which 
the program uses to determine 
the proper insulin dose. The 
company offers a virtual (tele-
health) clinic or a physical clinic 
in Livonia to take part in an 
insulin management program, 
but patients continue to see their 
regular doctor for overall diabe-
tes management.
The app became available last 
year through a pilot program 
with Blue Cross Blue Shield 
of Michigan. It is now a 
benefit that’
s covered by 
health insurance.
“Our goal is to 
make insulin therapy 
simpler and a lot 
more successful,
” 
Bashan says. “There 
is so much you can do 
today with technology.
”
Bashan, a husband and 
father of a teenage daughter, 
does not have diabetes, but 
he recalls seeing his great-
grandmother using insulin in 
the 1970s. Today, his mother and 
grandmother both have diabetes.
“If I live long enough, I’
ll have 
diabetes,
” he predicts.
According to the American 
Diabetes Association, in 2018, 
34.2 million Americans, or 
more than 10 percent of the 
population had diabetes; 1.5 
million new cases are diagnosed 
every year. 
To use the d-Nav program, 
patients will need a referral 
from their physician. For more 
information, visit hygieia.com. 

Eran Bashan

Dr. Israel 
Hodish

Steady
 Sugar

Local inventors’
 breakthrough app helps 
diabetes patients manage insulin at home.

ROBIN SCHWARTZ CONTRIBUTING WRITER

Health

u-
o

