Telemedicine in response to challenges of modern diabetology

Abstract

Due to the steadily increasing number of patients with diabetes all over the world, access to specialist diabetes care is becoming difficult, especially in rural areas. Approximately 30% of diabetic patients do not achieve the target blood glucose values, which is certainly an important problem of modern diabetology, because it translates into late vascular complications of diabetes, lower quality of life and premature death. In response to the raising demand for diabetes care, technological solutions increasing the accessibility to healthcare professionals with a concomitant reduction of costs of such care may be very useful. In a view of the above, the contribution of continuously developing widely understood information and communication technologies (ICT) to an improvement of blood glucose control in diabetic patients has been recently evaluated in research studies. Phone consultations, remote blood glucose levels monitoring and video consultations are the most commonly studied telemedical interventions. Each of them leads to an increased accessibility to specialist diabetes care. Besides clinical trials, in real patients’ life there are many mobile health applications (apps) available which may be helpful in daily life diabetes management however raise concerns about regulation and approval, privacy, accuracy and safety. Contrary to cardiology, telemedical solutions in diabetology are not popular for commercial use yet, which is why patients and their physicians still have to wait for standardisation and appropriate legal regulations for telemedical interventions in diabetes care. Although as evidenced by clinical trials, such interventions translate into improved blood glucose control, lower costs of diabetes care and even a reduction of hypoglycaemia risk.