Helping usher in the age of digital diabetes is U.S. Navy pilot Michael Weyenberg of Meridian, whose daughter, Allison, 8, has type 1 diabetes. Using crowd-sourced technology and a precocious app called Nightscout, Weyenberg has been able to check Allison's blood sugar in real time with a quick glance at his smart watch—even while airborne.

"I don't attempt to monitor my daughter's sugar while flying because the nature of the job is such that you can't do that but there have been occasions when I was airborne and noticed a blood sugar update on my watch," Weyenberg said. "Once it even happened at nearly 11,000 feet and I thought about how amazing it was that I could know what her sugar was doing from that high in the air."