Public officer Mehmet Tanrıseven helps people with coeliac disease in Turkey shop for gluten-free products with the smartphone app that he recently developed. Tanrıseven learned that his 9-year-old daughter Berra suffers from coeliac disease, an autoimmune disorder of the small intestine that occurs in genetically predisposed individuals. Since patients with coeliac disease must avoid consuming gluten – found in wheat, barley, rye and oats – Tanrıseven had to start shopping for gluten-free products, which are expensive and hard to find in Turkey. Tanrıseven's shopping list quickly became 20 pages long. "We learned that there is no treatment for coeliac disease and that our daughter has to adapt a gluten-free diet for the rest of her life. Even though a product may not contain any gluten, external elements can cause the product to interact with gluten, posing a greater health risk. Foundations and associations dedicated to the research and treatment of coeliac disease have prepared a list of products that she can purchase, but it is hard to shop with a list that contains 45,000 products," Tanrıseven said.
Although there is an app with a barcode scanner for gluten-free products in Europe, this app does not work in Turkey because the products registered on the app are not available in the country. In order to adapt this app to Turkish standards, Tanrıseven got together with computer programmers and developed the app called "Gluten Scanner" after four months of work. The app includes 45,000 gluten-free products that are sold in Turkey, and enables patients to find more products with regular updates. "We used to shop for two or three hours, but now we are able to finish our grocery shopping in 20 minutes," Tanrıseven said.
