Monitoring blood sugar through mobile app superior to in-person hospital visits among diabetes patients

According to the pilot study from India, published in Primary Care Diabetes, patients found real-time virtual consultation acceptable and convenient.

Mobile applications have become widely popular in providing healthcare services, aiming to lower the overall disease burden. Arun Raghavan, India Diabetes Research Foundation, Dr. A. Ramachandran's Diabetes Hospitals, Chennai, India, and colleagues sought to study the outcome of glycaemic management using a smartphone application Diahome, compared to conventional treatment. The researchers also assessed the overall acceptability of the application among users.

For this purpose, the researchers conducted a case-control, retrospective study of patients on virtual diabetes care utilizing the Diahome app (n = 441) and those who visited the hospital outpatient services (n = 446). The researchers selected women and men aged 45–60 with type 2 diabetes (T2DM).

The study led to the following findings:

• The authors analyzed 173 records with initial and follow-up visits (app users n = 91, non-app users n = 82). The age of the participants was 59 ± 12 years, and they were obese.
• The two groups were comparable in age, gender distribution, and duration of type 2 diabetes.
• Fasting blood glucose significantly reduced among the app users from a baseline level of 156 ± 70 mg/dl to 129 ± 40 mg/dl at follow-up.
• A decrease in HbA1c levels was seen in both groups; percentage improvement was better among app users (15.8%) compared to non-app users (10.4%).
• Triglyceride levels were higher at both time points among app users than in the other group.
• The performance of the Diahome app was rated as excellent by more than 56% of the users; among the Diahome services, virtual consultation was rated the highest (71.5%).

"Our results showed that diabetes management using a dedicated mobile application Diahome is feasible and superior to in-person hospital visits with regards to improvement in fasting blood glucose (FBG) and HbA1c values," the authors concluded. "Most patients readily accepted real-time virtual consultation."

The study pointed out that younger people had difficulty monitoring their condition. However, the app reduced the cost by half for patients due to an in-person hospital visits.

The app benefited the elderly who dropped out of regular care due to many hurdles in visiting the hospitals.

Reference:

The study, "Improvement in glycaemic control in patients with type 2 diabetes with treatment using an interactive mobile application – A pilot study from India," was published in the journal Primary Care Diabetes.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pcd.2022.10.008