A pilot project led by Doctor María Asunción Martínez Brocca seeks to empower patients with type 1 diabetes. To achieve this objective and implement remote monitoring of the disease, the Virgen del Rocío Hospital will implement telecheck-ups.
The initiative, which will be developed over the next three years, will compare the results of 74 patients with a confirmed diagnosis of Type 1 Diabetes. 37 of them will take part in remote monitoring while the control group will undergo traditional monitoring, i.e. they will have to visit their head doctors at their assigned healthcare center.
The goal of the Endocrinology and Nutrition Unit is to evaluate the clinical benefits: how well the treatment is adhered to, cost, patient satisfaction and the effectiveness of the model.
“Type 1 Diabetes is a form of the disease that often appears at an early age, so the people who suffer it are usually young and comfortable using technology, with an active lifestyle that must be combined with periodic revisions for their chronic pathology and insulin dependency. This initiative was suggested by our patients, who increasingly call for a different care model from the traditional hospital check-up,” said Martínez Brocca.
The Telehealth platform was developed by the Technological Innovation Group at the Virgen del Rocío Hospital in Seville. The solution proposed for the pilot schemes is a specific Telediabetes module that will allow patients to access their clinical reports from a computer.
This is the first module that offers real time interactions. Its design was based around standards that would make it compatible with any commercial brand of glucometer or insulin pump. In addition, it is linked to the patient’s electronic health record.
To monitor performance and add therapeutic education recommendations, which are currently offered by the hospital’s Diabetes Outpatient Department, professionals at the Virgen del Rocío will have access to the application. Patients will also be able to send and receive messages to and from their healthcare team, record electronic data from their glucometer and insulin pumps, and hold a videoconference with their specialist in real time.
“At the moment we are checking that the effectiveness of the monitoring is similar to that of in-person check-ups, but our patients are more satisfied as it means an indirect reduction of travel costs and work hours lost having to go to the hospital,” says the project coordinator.
Currently, the Technological Innovation Group Team at the Virgen del Rocío Hospital and representatives of the company Primum Health IT are working on the design of the application. The result being sought is for patients to be able to access the Telediabetes system via their mobile devices.
The Council of Equality, Health and Social Policies will finance the development of the project with 33,000 euros.
Source: Hospital Virgen del Rocío
