Assessment of Patient Perceptions About Web Telemonitoring Applied to Artificial Pancreas Use at Home.

Abstract

Patients with chronic diseases as well as health care systems could benefit from telemedicine applications such as remote monitoring (RM). RM relies on a device that sends patients' health data to a remote server accessible by care teams. Recent smartphone-based artificial pancreas (AP) systems collect comprehensive set of information and could therefore support the development of RM applied to diabetes. To better understand how RM could be integrated in future AP systems, we wanted to get patients' opinion on this concept, as they are the final users of these systems. An online questionnaire with 11 items was sent to 20 experienced patients who tested AP and RM during our recent outpatient studies in France and Italy. We received 17 answers. All patients considered that during their participation in trials, RM was useful, reassuring, and essential. One-third wouldn't have participated without it. When AP is commercialized, 88% of respondents think that AP should go with a RM tool, but it should be activated only at certain times, at first use or in case of difficulties (82%). Participants ask for technical support when a device fails (88%) and for medical help in case of prolonged hyperglycemia (65%) or severe or repeated hypoglycemia (53%), but not after each case of hypoglycemia (6%). More than 75% think that RM could help them to improve their blood glucose control. This preliminary work indicates that patients expect RM to be part of future AP development. Larger studies remain to be performed to investigate its usefulness and potential economic effectiveness.