DiaMetrics wins Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar’s 2025 Congressional App Challenge in Florida’s 27th District

When asked what inspired the creation of DiaMetrics, Michael Guan said, “Diametrics was developed for a deeply personal reason. Growing up, going home to my extended family in China each year, I was constantly surrounded by diabetes. Both of my grandparents on my mother’s and my father’s side live with the condition, and every visit displayed the pains they had to go through: their medication schedules, glucose monitoring, and stringent eating habits.

“As I continued aging, I learned more about the disease, whether through my Biology curriculum or family tales. I realized that I, too, was at risk of developing the heart-shattering condition. With such a strong family history, I clearly was on a similar track to my sister, who had already been discovered to be prediabetic by the time I was 14. Intrigued by this and concerned about my own health, I began looking into the condition. I developed a deep passion and interest for the management and diagnosis of the disease, and eventually connected it with Computer Science, another one of my passions.

“In the summer of 10th grade, I began researching fine-tuning LLMs for medical tasks, specifically those related to retinopathy, an ocular condition strongly linked to diabetes. The following summer, fueled by my twin passions, I applied and was accepted into the Clark Scholars Program, a research program that accepted only 12 students from around the country and tasked me with researching how to use the AI-READI dataset to develop novel multimodal diabetes classification models. Following the program, I gained not only a research paper, currently under review at IEEE ICHI ’26, but also a deepened, profound interest in the topic.

“However, as I explored the research, I felt fulfilled but not as much as I should’ve. I knew the research I conducted was truly advancing the field, but I couldn’t see any actual, tangible impact. All I did was improve models by percentage points and outperform benchmarks. That’s why I chose to develop an app that would allow me to apply the research experience I gained, making it accessible to patients.

“This way, DiaMetrics is my way of actualizing the silent research-based impact I have had over the past years, and using it not only to take control of my own health story, but also to support the well-being of others. My grandparents’ experiences taught me that prevention truly starts with awareness, and DiaMetrics is my contribution toward empowering people to make that awareness actionable.”