Approximately 537 million people are suffering from diabetes today. Total direct costs of diabetes worldwide are estimated at $966 billion in 2021. Given the growth of medical expenditures, increasing value in health care will require improvements in quality as well as reductions in cost (McKinsey, 2021). Especially, it has been shown that the degree of digitalization in the Swiss healthcare system is below average and needs more digital interfaces (McKinsey, 2021).

Although, the integration of digital health technology (DHT) that focus on diabetes can help to improve the care of diabetics (Klonoff et al., 2013), many General Practitioners (GPs) don’t use them. For the benefits of digital tools to materialize in the field of diabetes, GPs must first accept and adopt these technologies (Hsieh, 2015). Therefore, this research will tackle the following questions:

• What and how do GPs currently use digital tools for treating type 2 diabetics in Switzerland?
• What are their reasons for using or not using it?
• How should a digital tool look like so that they would use it more?

Method: ~15 semi-structured interviews with GPs in Switzerland

Expected results: A detailed map of existing barriers and concrete recommendations and designs how a digital tool for diabetics type 2 should look like from the perspective of the GPs.

Contact: odile-florence.giger@unisg.ch