Harnessing modern tech to transform care for diabetes patients

The World Health Organization (WHO), which is focusing on diabetes for its annual World Health Day today, projects that the disease will move up from the eighth-leading cause of death in 2012 to the seventh-leading cause by 2030.

The statistics for Asia are also worrying. In Singapore, the number of people with diabetes is predicted to reach 695,000 cases by 2030, compared with 328,000 in 2000.

The most common form is type 2 diabetes, which is when the body becomes resistant to insulin or does not make enough insulin, a hormone that regulates our blood sugar level. Globally, the cost of managing the disease is estimated at US$612 billion (S$829 billion) in 2014. This is where technology can help. WHO’s campaign stresses that managing the disease requires around-the-clock monitoring.

People with diabetes and their doctors need to carefully track blood glucose levels, food intake and physical exercise to calculate when and how insulin should be injected into their bodies. Any negligence can have disastrous consequences.

Automated and personalised tools can play an important role in managing diabetes more efficiently and accurately by monitoring data on glucose levels, fitness activity and diet. Healthcare practitioners can use these mobile and wearable devices to monitor patients, collect patient data and provide more targeted service. Applications can be used to monitor metrics such as blood sugar and alert healthcare professionals if readings are abnormal, before patients require medical intervention.

For instance, Singapore General Hospital’s Department of Endocrinology and Integrated Health Information Systems (IHiS) has developed a mobile application to help type 2 diabetes patients who are new to insulin therapy. The application informs insulin users how much insulin to inject and when, based on the fasting blood sugar reading they input into the app every morning. As a result, patients can self-adjust their insulin dosage without their doctor’s supervision and avoid complications from a delayed dosage adjustment.

There is a clear business case for corporations and technopreneurs to come up with new and innovative ways of helping patients deal with diabetes.

Practitioners of mobile health — the practice of medicine and public health supported by mobile devices — have consistently considered diabetes to be the therapy field offering the strongest market potential.

Apart from helping patients, unifying patient care with available technologies can also allow operational efficiencies which in turn lead to lower costs. Technological advancements can help ease and streamline the work of doctors. Hospitals can use software that helps the digitalisation of records and automates decisions based on crucial, accurate and real-time data. Known as Business Rules Management Systems or Rules Engines, this software can be used to monitor patient data and provide alerts to healthcare workers when risks are identified.

One of the problems that doctors face while treating patients with chronic diseases such as diabetes is managing the amount of health data accumulated over time. Healthcare institutions can create business applications that provide doctors and nurses with complete and immediate access to patient health information within a local, regional and national health information network, without the need for bulky and unreliable paper filling.

The application developed by SGH enabled healthcare staff to remotely monitor the patient’s progress and episodes, and quickly intervene and modify treatment plans, or communicate with patients over the phone, between clinic visits.

The Government is actively promoting a healthy lifestyle through its programmes such as National Steps Challenge, the Health Promotion Board’s initiative that encourages participants to gain points and redeem rewards by recording the number of steps taken per day, or reducing sugar levels in food served at school canteens to ward off obesity, which can lead to diabetes. However, maintenance of the disease can be as important as prevention, given that diabetes cannot be fixed simply with medication.

With the Government’s ongoing commitment and investment in Smart Nation initiatives and digitalisation, as well as continued research among technology providers, this will open up new possibilities to better manage patients’ care and empower people to manage their own health through self-monitoring tools. It will also enable the healthcare sector to treat more patients effectively at lower costs.

The discussion among governments, solution providers, researchers and the diabetes community should continue if we are to successfully fight this costly disease.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Benjamin Wong is Director of Asia Pacific Japan at Progress, a global software company.