Connecting Diabetes Care To The Internet Of Things

New connected health technologies can boost medication adherence with smartphone apps and gamification. Heino Lennartz, Vice President and General Manager Global Pharma, West Pharmaceutical Services reveals more in an interaction with Viveka Roychowdhury

- Vivek Roychowdhury

What is the impact of missed medication and irregular monitoring for a diabetic? How does this impact disease progression, both from a medical treatment as well as economic burden perspective?

Medication adherence in the management of diabetes and other chronic conditions is a complicated puzzle, but one that has to be solved in order to help protect patients from potentially devastating consequences. For example, if left untreated, diabetes leads to high cholesterol and hypertension, which in turn can trigger other complications including stroke, heart disease and even trouble with memory and vision.

While research indicates that a patient’s improved medication adherence is directly linked to favourable treatment outcomes for a variety of chronic conditions, including multiple sclerosis and diabetes, patient compliance with chronic medication therapies is remarkably low. In fact, the World Health Organization estimates it at 50 per cent internationally.i In addition to poor clinical outcomes, this non-compliance can mean lost revenue for pharmaceutical companies worldwide (some estimates put this loss at $564 billion globally) and increased costs for many healthcare financial stakeholders, including the patients themselves.

What kind of features are being explored to improve patient adherence and monitoring?

For patients with chronic conditions, self-injection systems can provide newfound freedom to self-manage their diseases outside of traditional healthcare settings, like the doctor’s office or clinic. To account for this trend, selfinjection systems must be designed with a patient-centric focus. For example, West Pharmaceutical Services’ SmartDose platform was developed with extensive human factors testing to address potential obstacles to compliance: