The modern diabetes care experience is broken. Today, patients with diabetes are asked to navigate a maze of specialty providers and bear the burden of complicated self-monitoring simply to keep their condition in check. The siloed care model isn’t simply costly for patients and those responsible for their care; it’s demoralizing, exacerbating mental health effects of a chronic disease, and creating a reinforcing cycle of non-adherence.
On top of this, the COVID pandemic has made regular physician visits which normally serve as a critical touch point for diabetes patients less safe, and easily canceled. More than 200 healthcare professionals from 47 countries rank diabetes as the condition that will be most impacted by the reduction in healthcare resources due to COVID-19. According to a recent JAMA study, there have been substantial decreases in primary care delivery during the COVID pandemic, despite the rapid uptick in the use of virtual care visits. In the absence of effective in-person care for diabetes during the pandemic, and with synchronous telemedicine visits with physicians alone unable to provide the continuous support needed for effective diabetes self-management, forward-thinking employers are turning to digital care programs for diabetes to support their workers.
