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Advancing Research on the Application of Digital Health Technology to the Management of Type 2 Diabetes

May 2024 Council

Lead Division/Office

DEM

Point(s) of Contact

Henry Burch, M.D.

Executive Summary

The application of digital health technology to the management of T2D is at an inflection point and comes at a time where a paradigm shift in the approach to T2D is urgently needed. The global diabetes epidemic is rapidly outpacing the ability of current health care systems to provide optimal care and ensure patients achieve basic standards of diabetes care. The increasing availability of FDA-cleared digital health technology (DHT) for type 2 diabetes (T2D) management holds great promise for addressing current barriers to acceptable care by ensuring improved patient access to the health care system, enhanced patient engagement and sense of empowerment, improved glycemia and other diabetes-related metabolic outcomes, reduced clinical inertial and provider dissatisfaction, and provision of favorable economics at the health care system (HCS) level. While integrated multimodality digital health approaches, referred to as virtual diabetes clinics (VDC) hold great promise and are actively marketed by industry to employers, insurers, and HCSs, the scientific rigor of studies supporting this approach lags behind their promotion, and industry has little motivation for funding large RCTs to examine the efficacy of the digital VDC approach.  This initiative is intended to advance research on the application of currently available DHT in a multimodality VDC model to examine the clinical efficacy of an urgently needed paradigm shift in the population health approach to T2D.