DDMS: Digital Diabetes Management Score
This pilot project, in close collaboration with Prof. Dr. med. Michael Brändle, Cantonal Hospital of St. Gallen, explores how general practitioners can improve their capabilities in managing type-2 diabetes (T2D) patients. More concretely, we will assess how to digitalize the Swiss Society of Endocrinology and Diabetology score (Christ et al., 2022). The resulting digital diabetes management score (DDMS), with its specific facets (e.g., HbA1C, blood pressure, body weight), should allow general practitioners to understand their T2D management capabilities better, enabling them to make informed decisions and improve the T2D management of their patients. Specifically, DDMS should not only inform GPs about structural shortcomings of their diabetes management based on population-level statistics but also provide precision support for individual diabetes patients. Successful scaling up and implementation of this pilot project has the potential to alleviate the health and economic burden of T2D substantially.
The proposed pilot project will include the prototypical development of a user-friendly, scalable, and data-driven T2D management service for GPs that addresses existing shortcomings. These shortcomings include a lack of aggregated descriptive statistics of patient characteristics in practice, a non-existent automatic reminder system for outpatient diabetes management, and a lack of personalized evidence-based lifestyle advice.
Related work
Christ, E., Czock, A., Renström, F., Ammeter, T., Ebrahimi, F., Zechmanna, S., Kutz, A., Diem, P., Häuptle, C., & Brändle, M. (2022) Evaluation of type 2 diabetes care management in nine primary care practices before and after implementation of the Criteria of Good Disease Management of Diabetes established by the Swiss Society of Endocrinology and Diabetology. Swiss Medical Weekly, 152(2930), w30197–w30197. 10.4414/SMW.2022.W30197