
India shows the way to better diabetes care at no added cost
Low-cost software used by a non-physician worker doubles blood glucose control and lowers blood pressure and ‘bad’ LDL cholesterol in diabetes patients at no added cost
Low-cost software used by a non-physician worker optimises treatment and lowers complications in diabetes patients by doubling blood glucose-control and lowering blood pressure and ‘bad’ LDL cholesterol at no added cost, reports a study from India and Pakistan.
In India, close to 70 million people have diabetes and another 40 million are insulin-resistant, which is a precursor to diabetes. More than four in five diabetics on medication in India do not have their blood glucose under control .
The new study, of more than 1,100 patients across 10 centres – nine in India and one in Karachi, Pakistan – over five years and published in Annals of Internal Medicine, is the first global trial of diabetes management in low- and middle-income countries, home to 75% of the world’s 415 million diabetics.
The study found that non-physician coordinators with technology that welded electronic health records with decision-support software sizeably improved blood sugar, blood pressure and cholesterol profiles of patients and lowered risk of complications such as heart disease, eye disease (retinopathy), kidney failure and amputations.
“What makes this model workable is the low dependence on physicians, who are often few and far between, especially in rural areas. Any graduate or social worker with six or more months of experience in healthcare, social work or allied sciences and basic computing and good commun
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