Mobile Health and Diabetes Management

Diabetes impacts 30.3 million Americans at the climbing cost of $327 billion, estimated as recently as 2017. In mid February, the diabetes management company Glooko, announced two upcoming releases of insulin pen technology. The pens will be able to push information to a health solutions platform; which will allow patients to more easily monitor their condition themselves and share diabetes related data with their care providers. Accompanying this announcement was the introduction of an improvement in the technological partnership between Glooko and Dexcom. The Dexcom G6 glucose monitor will now be interoperable with Novo Nordisk's diasend platform, thus allowing users of the glucose monitor to upload data to the platform. This new innovation will also be useful for patients and physicians that have on-the-go lives as Novo Nordisk has created a mobile app platform that is interoperable with its web-based platform.

Livongo Health announced that it will be the first US enterprise diabetes management company to bring Abbott's Freestyle Libre Pro glucose monitoring patch to its customers. This product was cleared by the FDA 2 years ago, and consists of a sensor, which is embedded into the skin, and a patch that lies on the surface of the skin. The patch is about the size of a one dollar coin and can be worn on the arm for 14 days. The sensor that is embedded into the patient's skin records glucose data every 15 minutes, liberating the patient from having to prick themselves for every glucose reading. Instead the patient only has to prick themselves once over the course of a 14 day period. The wearer of the Abbott's Freestyle Libre Pro device is also given the ability to access the previous 8 hours of readings and information.

With such a presence of diabetes and the lifestyle choices that lead to diabetes within the U.S., it is great to see that strides are being made to equip the public with more informative, supportive, integrated, and user-friendly solutions.