This week Joslin Center for Diabetes added an Institute for Technology Translation to make it easier to work with medical device companies. In an interview with MedCity News, the executive director of the institute, Harry Mitchell, talked about what he sees as some of the interesting developments in digital health tools.
Mitchell said since it collaborated with Glooko earlier this year, it’s been approached by startups to use its specialist expertise to help them advance their digital health tools. “There’s more activity than we ever thought.”
He emphasized that the organization is not actively seeking to set up companies, nor is it a venture firm. He added that companies and entrepreneurs are developing useful technology and platforms for capturing data and providing visualization tools. But what Glooko developed — a product that makes patients more aware of hypoglycemic events — is a great example of the ways mobile devices are opening up ways to make diabetes more manageable.
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“We see that the future is with mobile apps. They will boost efficient reporting and make physicians more efficient.” Still, these tools pose their own sets of challenges.
“There are a number of mobile apps that can use our expertise. There’s a lot of good information out there, but if we can make data about co-morbidities — complications like hypertension — available early on, we can do so much to reduce those complications,” Mitchell said.
Asked about continuous glucose monitoring, Mitchell noted that only 9 percent of Type 1 diabetics use CGM. The challenge is about coming up with something easy to use. “I think we’ll see growth in the future as the technology gets better.”
He noted that Joslin is seeing larger companies interested in incubators, joint ventures, and technology and “we are getting into conversations with those organizations.”
A Personalized Approach to Medication Nonadherence
At the Abarca Forward conference earlier this year, George Van Antwerp, managing director at Deloitte, discussed how social determinants of health and a personalized member experience can improve medication adherence and health outcomes.
The first founding member of the institute, Dexcom, had its own digital news this week. A mobile health app it’s developing with Insulet’s insulin management device OmniPod will use glucose and other diabetes-related data from patients’ devices and display the integrated data through the smartphone app.
[Photo credit: First Aid Smartphone photo from Big Stock Photo]
