Partnership Integrates Health, Activity Data To Provide Diabetes Management Insight
By Christine Kern, contributing writer
Medtronic and Fitbit join forces to help track glucose levels and physical activity data together.
The total costs of diagnosed diabetes in the U.S. in 2012 reached $245 billion, and average expenditures for people with diagnosed diabetes were 2.3 times higher than those without the condition, according to the American Diabetes Association. Some 29.1 million Americans — 9.3 percent of the population — suffered from diabetes in 2012, with 8.1 million of them undiagnosed.
“Many people live with diabetes for a long period of time without knowing they have it,” says Patricia Bononi, MD, Medical Director, AHN Center for Diabetes and Endocrine Health. “In addition to encouraging healthy lifestyles to prevent diabetes, we urge people at high risk for the disease to undergo screening in effort to reduce complications of diabetes through earlier interventions.”
Diabetes can be deadly when not treated appropriately, and it was the seventh leading cause of death in the U.S. in 2010, with 69,071 death certificates listing it as the underlying cause of death A total of 234,051 death certificates listing diabetes as an underlying or contributing cause of death.
A key element in the treatment of diabetes is careful attention to glucose levels combined with regular exercise and weight loss, both of which can reduce the impact of the disease on an individual. In order to help foster the treatment and outcomes of individuals suffering from Type 2 Diabetes, Medtronic and Fitbit have partnered in an initiative to integrate health and activity data into the new CGM solution, allowing patients to track their glucose levels and physical activity data in one streamlined applications. This integration provides meaningful insights into exactly how exercise affects glucose letter to produce more effective diabetes care management.
“We believe monitoring glucose is a critical element in the management of diabetes and therefore, glucose should be included among other vital signs. As such, it has never been more important to increase the collaboration between healthcare and technology to simplify daily diabetes management for the 29 million patients living with type 2 diabetes in the United States,” says Laura Stoltenberg, vice president and general manager of Non-Intensive Diabetes Therapies at Medtronic.
“By creating a connection between physical activity and glucose levels, our iPro2 myLog mobile app solution provides new tools and insights, so that physicians can optimize therapy and patients can better understand how to manage their diabetes. By helping people with diabetes implement lasting lifestyle changes, this partnership underscores our commitment to transforming diabetes care, together, for greater freedom and better health.”
The integration of this information also simplifies the sharing of data with healthcare providers, creating a more accurate and actionable view of the patient’s physical activity and status, thus helping to improve overall patient outcomes.