Diabetes as the Trojan Horse of Digital Health

Originally, a Trojan horse referred to the wooden horse used to cunningly penetrate and conquer the city of Troy by the Greeks. In our era, the term has been adapted to describe disguised malwares that attack unsuspecting users’ computers and wreak havoc once inside. Judging by the title of this article, how then can a condition as serious as diabetes help move the digital health agenda forward? Computer generated 3D illustration with the Trojan Horse at Troy, source: http://codingtidbit.com/ Once upon a time, empowered patients started a revolution…  It all begins with a crippling speed of bureaucracy and empowered patients who have had enough. One of the most awaited devices to help in diabetes care was, for a painfully long time, the artificial pancreas. The latter would replace patients’ malfunctioning pancreas with an advanced technology that creates a closed-loop-system constantly measuring the glucose level while communicating with an insulin pump to administer insulin and glucagon in the right amount at the right time automatically. This would prevent serious complications like the dead-in-bed syndrome, where patients die in their sleep due to low blood glucose level while asleep and their inability to correct it in time. Alas, with regulation lagging behind, medtech companies failed to deliver such a device. This blatant failure of medical hardware companies and regulatory bodies forced diabetic patients to take matters into their own ...
Source: The Medical Futurist - Category: Information Technology Authors: Tags: E-Patients Future of Medicine Healthcare Design diabetes digital health diabetes management patient design Source Type: blogs