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Diabetes Care in the Digital Era: a Synoptic Overview

  • Therapies and New Technologies in the Treatment of Diabetes (M Pietropaolo, Section Editor)
  • Published:
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Abstract

Purpose of Review

Diabetes care is undergoing a remarkable transformation by the advancements in information and communications technology (ICT). The aim of this review is to provide a general overview of various ICT-based interventions for diabetes care, challenges of their adoption, and consider future directions.

Recent Findings

A number of systematic reviews have examined studies on various aspects of telemedicine and eHealth for diabetes care, but they are generally focused on one specific type of technology application for diabetes care.

Summary

A wide range of solutions from manual or automated telephone calls, short message services, websites, mobile health apps, remote monitoring devices, and sophisticated artificial intelligence systems has been studied in different settings and scopes with mixed results. However, despite the promising results of research studies, such innovative solutions are not widely adopted by health systems worldwide. Lack of supportive policy and legislation, unsustainable reimbursement, inefficient business models, and concerns regarding the security and privacy of health data are among the most problematic barriers.

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Funding

Farhad Fatehi is financially supported by the Queensland Government through an Advance Queensland Research Fellowship. Anish Menon is a recipient of Diabetes Queensland Scholarship. Anish Menon and Dominique Bird are financially supported by the Centre of Research Excellence in Telehealth funded by the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC; grant ID APP1061183).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for Online Health, Faculty of Medicine, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia

    Farhad Fatehi, Anish Menon & Dominique Bird

  2. Australian e-Health Research Centre, CSIRO, Brisbane, Australia

    Farhad Fatehi

  3. Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran

    Farhad Fatehi

  4. Department of Diabetes and Endocrinology, Princess Alexandra Hospital, Brisbane, Australia

    Anish Menon

Authors
  1. Farhad Fatehi
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  2. Anish Menon
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  3. Dominique Bird
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All authors contributed to the writing and revising of the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Farhad Fatehi.

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Conflict of Interest

Farhad Fatehi and Anish Menon declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Dominique Bird has a patent from Bupa Australia Digital Diabetes scripts - Monash University with royalties paid.

Human and Animal Rights and Informed Consent

This article does not contain any studies with human or animal subjects performed by any of the authors.

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This article is part of the Topical Collection on Therapies and New Technologies in the Treatment of Diabetes

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Fatehi, F., Menon, A. & Bird, D. Diabetes Care in the Digital Era: a Synoptic Overview. Curr Diab Rep 18, 38 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11892-018-1013-5

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