Monitoring and managing diabetes is challenging in part because many patients cannot manage their conditions on their own without ongoing support from providers. Now, a growing number of physicians are finding that the practical use of an everyday technology—cell phones—can yield improved outcomes for patients with diabetes, MD Options reports.

A growing number of interactive applications are allowing patients to use their cell phones to submit glucose values and communicate with and receive real-time feedback from providers daily.

“People with chronic diseases live most of their lives outside of doctors’ offices,” says David L. Katz, MD, MPH, director of the Prevention Research Center at the Yale University School of Medicine in New Haven, Conn. “No matter how high-quality the patient’s visit with the doctor, nurse, diabetes educator, or dietitian is, this exchange constitutes only a very small part of that patient’s life. Rather, the weeks and months between office visits are really when health is either cultivated or compromised. Cell phone technology can be used to extend a provider’s voice outside of the clinical setting.”

The high degree of patient involvement needed to achieve optimal clinical outcomes makes diabetes unusual among chronic diseases, says David G. Marrero, PhD, professor of medicine at the Indiana University School of Medicine’s Division of Endocrinology and Metabolism in Indianapolis. “Diabetes is very much a lifestyle disease, requiring patients to make numerous decisions on a daily basis with regard to behaviors that will affect their health,” he comments. “Cell phone glucose monitoring applications offer several opportunities to affect those decisions.”