The Role of Continuous Glucose Data in Remote Patient Monitoring
Following Current Health’s partnership with CGM leader, Dexcom, our CMO, Dr Adam Wolfberg joined endocrinologist, Dr Egils Bogdanovics to host a webinar detailing the benefits of our newly combined platform.
If you are interested in learning how continuous glucose data can be used in remote monitoring of patients with diabetes, here are the key discussion points from this webinar:
Lack of clinical insight into patient recovery can result in hospital readmission
Recent research indicates 1 in 5 unplanned hospital readmissions within 30-days involve a patient who has diabetes either as a primary or coexisting condition. This challenge exists due to added complexity glucose instability adds during post-discharge care. Furthermore, when these patients get home, there hasn’t historically been an easy way to monitor at-home glucose readings, medication adherence, insulin intake, diet and exercise, making it hard to identify and solve preventable problems.
Diabetes and CHF present further healthcare challenges at home
It is reported that the prevalence of heart failure in patients with type 2 diabetes is four times greater compared with the general population. While both conditions are individually associated with considerable morbidity and mortality, the combination worsens adverse outcomes, quality of life and cost of treatment. In fact, the risk of hospitalization for heart failure patients with diabetes is 50% greater compared to patients with a single diagnosis. One of the key contributors to this is poor diabetic control, therefore, to address this challenge, it’s essential that health providers deliver acute care at home to help maintain safe glucose levels.
A continuous and multi-vital sign monitoring solution can significantly improve post-discharge care
With the addition of Dexcom’s G6 continuous glucose monitor to Current Health’s platform, healthcare teams now have access to patients’ blood glucose levels alongside their core vitals data, weight, food logs and self-reported symptom information – all of which are captured from the patient when they are at home.
With this integrated approach, clinicians gain the broadest possible picture of patient health allowing them to track patients’ recovery without having to wait until their follow up appointment, which can often be many weeks following discharge from hospital. Moreover, with continuous vitals and blood glucose capture, clinicians can identify health trends far sooner compared to spot-check based solutions. This permits proactive adjustments to be made to a patient’s post-acute care regimen which is highly beneficial when monitoring patients where changes to health status can happen rapidly.
Multi-parameter capture is also particularly beneficial when monitoring patients with multiple chronic conditions. For example, when monitoring patients with CHF and diabetes, teams can track CHF exacerbation symptoms such as weight increase, shortness of breath and hypertension in addition to their blood glucose levels.
With real-time insight into patient health, clinicians can spot deterioration early and intervene to avoid serious health issues
By spotting the early signs of health deterioration such as pulse and respiratory rate changes and derangement in glucose, serious hospitalization events such as diabetic ketoacidosis or hypoglycemia can be avoided. Interventions delivered by clinicians to stabilise their patient’s condition can include changing medications, adjusting insulin doses or engaging with the patient through video calls to make lifestyle and diet recommendations. By intervening in this way, re-hospitalization is avoided and clinical outcomes are improved.
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