People with prediabetes face countless and sometimes overwhelming choices every day that can greatly affect their long-term health. Making the right decisions about nutrition, physical activity, sleep, and stress management is an important factor in overall health for most people, but it is even more important for those at risk of developing type 2 diabetes.
The theme of American Diabetes Month in November this year is “The Big Step Up”, which emphasizes the big and small ways we can all recognize, reduce risk, and reduce the burden of diabetes. By focusing on decisions made every moment, we can take the necessary steps to improve our overall health and reduce the risk of type 2 diabetes.
Our national goal of preventing type 2 diabetes can only be achieved if these high-risk groups have access to immediate care. Unfortunately, traditional face-to-face medical care is not designed to support 24/7 access to medical services.more than 34 million Americans People with diabetes, 90% to 95% of them have type 2 diabetes. It is obvious from the high incidence of type 2 diabetes that more work needs to be done to prevent the disease from moving forward.
A huge obstacle to diabetes prevention is that pre-diabetic patients cannot obtain information that can control important moments. More effective, personalized, intentional, and frequent interventions can improve patients’ self-efficacy, which is essential to help people at risk control their health and establish and support continued healthy habits before they develop diabetes.
But how can we provide this kind of care to everyone who needs it? Our background as care providers and patients managing chronic diseases, as well as our research and innovation experience in this field, have helped us witness how the virtual care ecosystem can narrow the gap in care access and help people cope with daily decision-making.
By using on-demand digital solutions to enhance traditional face-to-face care, we can create powerful new care models that maximize the use of clinical resources while meeting patient needs anytime, anywhere.
The National Diabetes Prevention Program (National DPP) plan based on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is an evidence-based intervention that has been proven to reduce the incidence of type 2 diabetes by 58% and has Diabetes medical standards From the American Diabetes Association. Intervention can be done in a variety of ways, including face-to-face, distance learning, and online. A high-quality virtual diabetes prevention plan combines the national DPP’s evidence-based care practices with technologies that reach people’s locations, which can educate, intervene, and address key risk factors. Virtual consultations, including those supported by conversational artificial intelligence (AI), have been shown to help people make meaningful behavior changes and ultimately drive them to achieve results.
Users of these programs benefit from personalized coaching when they need it most—no need to make appointments or call ahead to schedule them. Data can be easily recorded by users or monitored through connected devices, allowing individuals to control their progress and take pride in improving their living habits. And because these tools have unlimited scalability, they have a unique ability to cover almost all people with prediabetes.
What needs to be clear is that virtual chronic disease care plans should not be completely divorced from the relationship between the individual and his care team and provider. On the contrary, these tools can play an important role in correcting decentralized health care services and strengthening on-site medical services.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, there has been more demand for a seamless virtual care experience than ever before, so we have seen unprecedented innovation in the field of digital health.
There are 88 million adults in the United States with prediabetes, so providing upstream care to prevent these people from developing type 2 diabetes has great potential. Solutions that increase care touchpoints, engage patients, and engage them more deeply in health will help improve outcomes, whether through weight loss management, nutrition counseling, or fitness coaching. However, we must ensure that such solutions are integrated with healthcare systems to support simple, accessible interfaces for patients without adding a layer of fragmentation to their care coordination.
We urge health plans and providers to invest in the health of people at risk for prediabetes and type 2 diabetes by incorporating virtual care into their existing healthcare infrastructure when evaluating their digital transformation process. When combined with a holistic treatment model, these programs can help shift the tide of diabetes prevention towards compassionate and accessible-and even life-changing-millions of people’s care.
We have the opportunity to tackle one of the biggest challenges in healthcare together: enabling individuals to better manage their health and slow the progression of STDs. We urge healthcare providers and professionals to make more effective use of the virtual resources we have to curb the trend of this disease.
Photo: Murat Gocmen, Getty Images
