Diabetes management is a major concern worldwide. According to International Diabetes Federation, 387 million people had diabetes in 2014; by 2035 this will rise to 592 million. This disease is costs a lot in terms of suffering and health management costs. People living with diabetes collect, evaluate, and manage multiple aspects of their lives – from sugar levels to food choices to exercises. And there are multiple healthcare providers who are involved in managing the diabetes patient.

Royal Philips, Netherlands-based Radboud University Medical Center, and Salesforce have come up with a prototype for a connected cloud based health solution for diabetes management. The solution is a mobile patient app and an online community that connects various wearable devices such as glucose meters, activity monitors, and patient self-reported data to the online app via smartphones and tablets. The mobile devices also serve as a medium to receive critical data such as blood glucose levels, insulin use, and provide information on what needs to be done to manage their diabetes and health. The online community, which is secure, connects the information received from the patient to the records from their health care providers. This allows the patient to self manage diabetes, take advantage of others who are part of the community and learn from their experiences and also communicate with their healthcare providers.

Solutions like these, where patients are able to self manage their conditions, get real time feedback from the community and healthcare providers, and use their existing wearables and mobile devices, will lead to the necessary change in healthcare management as well as reduce costs for chronic disease management.