Who Is Downloading the Freeware AIDA v4.3 Interactive Educational Diabetes Simulator? An Audit of 2

DIABETES TECHNOLOGY & THERAPEUTICSVolume 4, Number 4, 2002© Mary Ann Liebert, Inc.Who Is Downloading the Freeware AIDA v4.3Interactive Educational Diabetes Simulator? An Audit of 2,437 Downloads1,2ELDON D. LEHMANN, M.B. B.S., B.Sc.ABSTRACTThe purpose of this paper is to report an audit of 2,437 downloads of the AIDA interactiveeducational diabetes simulator. AIDA is a diabetes computer program that permits the inter-active simulation of plasma insulin and blood glucose profiles for educational, demonstra-tion, and self-learning purposes. It has been made freely available, without charge, on the In-ternet as a noncommercial contribution to continuing diabetes education. Since its launch in1996 over 200,000 visits have been logged at the AIDA Website—www.2aida.org—and over37,000 copies of the AIDA program have been downloaded free-of-charge. This report docu-ments an audit of downloaders of the software, with the intended goals of the study beingto demonstrate the use of the Internet for auditing and surveying diabetes software users andto confirm the proportion of patients with diabetes and their relatives who are actually mak-ing use of the AIDA v4.3 program. The Internet-based survey methodology was confirmed to1be robust and reliable. Over a 7 / -month period (from mid-July 2000 to early March 2001)22,437 responses were received. During the corresponding period 4,100 actual downloads ofthe software were independently logged via the same route at ...