Diabetes Study Leverages iPad For Transition Care
By Christine Kern, contributing writer
iPad technology will be tested to explore the impact of different diabetes interventions for patients transitioning from the hospital to home.
The new Bamberg Diabetes Transitional Care Study will utilize cutting-edge iPad technology to explore the impact and feasibility of different diabetes interventions for patients transitioning from the hospital to home, according to a press release.
Together, South Carolina Clinical & Translational Research (SCTR) Institute at the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) and the North Carolina Translational and Clinical Sciences (NC TraCS) Institute at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill are working to decrease diabetes prevalence and complications in Bamberg County, SC.
In collaboration with MUSC and UNC-CH, the Bamberg County Diabetes Coalition, the Regional Medical Center of Orangeburg and Calhoun Counties (RMC) and the South Carolina Department of Health and Human Services (SC DHHS) will use Voorhees College as the local host for the project. The project is led by principal Investigators Dr. Sam Cykert from UNC-CH and Dr. Carolyn Jenkins of MUSC.
“This collaborative effort is unique, rather than limiting patients to short clinic visits, we are combining community health workers and tech to address access issues in rural health within the community,” explained Cykert.
The three-month research study will investigate which of the following three approaches to diabetes management is most effective: bringing in community health workers to aid high-risk patients in managing their care; follow-up phone calls by nurses to patients; or standard physician instructions alone.
The overarching goal of the initiative is to establish a cost-effective and best-practice diabetes management model in Bamberg County that could be disseminated nationally. The model ultimately could reduce unnecessary hospital readmissions and improve self-care for this high-risk population.
In the course of the study, the researchers will be using iPads to perform medication reconciliation; to create and assess disease-specific checklists and warning signs; to do diet and physical activity assessments; and to provide resources for patients like teaching videos, accessible community resources, and dietary advice. The iPad checklists will be incorporated into the clinic record and if any red flag checklist items are activated, seem not to be making sense, or signaling that things are not going well, users will be connected to the clinic in real time.
Diabetes is the seventh leading cause of death in South Carolina, and in Bamberg County, nearly 15 percent of residents suffer from the disease, a rate over 1.5 times the national average. Bamberg County’s rural nature restricts access to medical care, nutrition counseling and self-management training for chronic illness and thus makes it an ideal intervention setting for this initiative.