Health IT and Its Role in Diabetes Management

I missed the following report until a few days ago!

Report: I.T. Aids Diabetes Management

July 18, 2007

Information technology can play a valuable role in helping providers manage patients with Type-2 diabetes, but costs outweigh the savings for many of the technologies, according to a new report.

The exception, in the report from the Center for Information Technology Leadership, is the use by providers of electronic diabetes registries and clinical decision support software. Use of registries, researchers estimate, could save $14.5 billion in health care expenditures over 10 years. Clinical decision support over the same period could save $10.6 billion.

The Center for Information Technology, created by Boston-based Partners HealthCare System in 2002, previously published reports on the value of computerized provider order entry systems for ambulatory care and standardized national health care information exchange. Funding for the new report, “The Value of Information Technology-Enabled Diabetes Management,” came from a grant by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Princeton, N.J.

More here:

http://www.healthdatamanagement.com/news/15472-1.html

This is the way the authors describe the report

The Value of Information Technology-Enabled Diabetes Management

Diabetes, a chronic condition in which the body has lost its ability to produce insulin or utilize it correctly, is the fifth-leading cause of death by disease in the United States. The Centers for Disease Control estimated in 2005 that more than 20.8 million Americans have diabetes at a cost, according to the American Diabetes Association, of more than $132 billion.

Disease management programs that focus on Type-2 diabetes have been viewed as a means to counter this epidemic. Increasingly, these programs rely on information technologies (IT) to identify patients, engage them more actively in their care, remind providers of appropriate preventive screenings and treatment options, and track patients with diabetes over time. Yet the value that IT-enabled diabetes management programs could bring to Type-2 diabetes care is not known.

To examine this issue, the Center for Information Technology Leadership (CITL) with generous support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and InterSystems, researched the benefits, costs, and quality implications of IT-enabled diabetes management programs (ITDM) in the US. Summarized in our report, The Value of Information Technology-Enabled Diabetes Management, CITL’s research indicates that ITDM can:

• Avoid millions of cases of diabetes complications, such as kidney failure, stroke, heart attacks, and blindness, can be avoided, and can save hundreds of thousands of lives.
• Improve compliance with standards of care, from the current rate of less than 50% to as high as 80%.
• Save money in select cases. Electronic diabetes registries used in physician offices can save a net of $14.5 billion in diabetes-related costs over 10 years. Other forms of ITDM cost more than they save.

More here:

http://www.citl.org/research/ITDM.asp

Links are as follows

Download the Full ITDM Report.
Order a copy of the Full ITDM Report. (You will leave this web site)
View the ITDM Report Expert Panel.

All I can do is apologise for not finding this sooner and encouraging its reading!

Enjoy!

David.