The Centers for Disease Control & Prevention predict that by 2050, if current trends continue, 1 in 3 adults in the U.S. will have diabetes. The digital diabetes management company GlucoMe hopes it can develop a smarter healthcare model t0 fit this growing patient population.
“Diabetes is an inter-world epidemic – a pandemic – and the number of patients is constantly increasing,” co-founder & CEO Yiftah Ben Aharon told Drug Delivery Business News. “So, it doesn’t make sense to keep the current treatment model and current care model the same.”
Ben Aharon told us that the traditional practice of patients visiting their physician every 3 months to discuss their treatment regimen is not practical – it’s challenging to gather useful information when physicians rely on their patients to recall if they complied with their insulin or how frequently they exercised.
The company is a player in a growing market of connected diabetes management platforms. Ben Aharon argued that GlucoMe’s model has distinct advantages, particularly when it comes to cost.
“We wanted to make sure that we can provide connected devices at the price-point of non-connected devices,” he told us.
The 3-pronged system, comprised of sensors, a mobile app and a cloud-based Digital Diabetes Clinic, transmits data across devices using acoustic waves. The company’s technology doesn’t require any additional plug-in or even a WiFi connection to send data back and forth, Ben Aharon explained.
“We did it in order to keep it simple and to make sure that we don’t add hardware components that will cost more,” he said.
The company’s technology includes a blood glucose monitor and a connected insulin pen monitor that sends data about the patient’s compliance and health to the mobile app.
The app acts as a communication hub that collects the patient’s data. Ben Aharon referred to it as “the personal dashboard of the patient.”
The cloud-based Digital Diabetes Clinic incorporates the collected data and an algorithm generates a recommended treatment plan that is sent to the patient’s physician. The physician can choose to accept it, in which case it is sent back to the patient with directions on how to follow the instructions, or the physician can choose to modify or reject it.
GlucoMe won European Marketing Authorization last year, according to Ben Aharon, and it is selling its products in Africa, Israel, Europe and India. He said that they expect to conduct a sizable clinical trial at Johns Hopkins this year to move forward towards FDA clearance.
