A new study, published by JAMA Network Open, found that people living with diabetes can benefit from using self-management apps on their computers and mobile devices.

These tools offer a platform for individuals to have more control over their care by increasing communication with their healthcare team, monitoring lab results and medication refills.

They found that by giving people living with diabetes access to a mobile and computer-based self-management tools, their medication adherence and glycemic control improved.

The study evaluated 111,463 individuals who already had an oral diabetes prescription at baseline with no insulin use from April 2015 to December 2017. Researchers evaluated medical adherence to oral medications by monitoring the “percentage of days covered” (PDC) and by measuring glycemic levels.

For computer-only access results were:

• PDC increase of 1.16 (95% CI, 0.63 to 1.70) percentage points
• HbA_1c level change of -0.06 (95% CI, -0.08 to -0.03) percentage points

The study also tested the results for combining both computer-based and mobile access. They found that combining the two, they were able to see further improvements.

For computer and mobile access the results were:

• PDC increase of 1.67 (95% CI, 1.10 to 2.23) percentage points
• HbA_1c level change of -0.13 (95% CI, -0.16 to -0.10) percentage points

As the JAMA Network Open suggests, “these functions are particularly useful for improving the quality of care for patients with chronic conditions, such as diabetes, that require ongoing self-management.”

These results indicate that by offering web-based self-management tools to individuals, medication adherence and glycemic control can improve over time.

You can read more about this study here.

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