Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust Awards $5 Million to Evaluate Virtual Diabetes Specialty Clinic Model
NEW YORK, Aug. 10, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- The Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust today announced a new $5,025,099 grant to the Jaeb Center for Health Research Foundation to evaluate the efficacy of a virtual specialty clinic model for improving clinical and psychosocial outcomes for people with diabetes. This clinical trial will include remote onboarding of continuous glucose monitoring (CGM), insulin dosing support, and mental health support.
Largely due to geography, many people with diabetes in the U.S. lack access to an endocrinologist who can provide expert guidance that can lead to better outcomes. As a result, they may not have access to up-to-date advancements in devices that have been shown to be beneficial for people with diabetes CGM is proven to reduce average blood glucose levels, as well as severe hypoglycemia and diabetic ketoacidosis. Ensuring access to specialty care is possible with advances in diabetes care technology, and the goal of this study is to see if access to virtual specialty care that includes introduction to CGM can improve outcomes.
In January 2019, Helmsley funded the Jaeb Center's pilot study to assess whether CGM could be successfully introduced outside of a clinic. Over three months, Certified Diabetes Care and Education Specialists (CDCESs) from Cecelia Health remotely onboarded 34 individuals who were new to CGM and received their diabetes care from their PCP. The results, presented at the 2020 International Conference on Advanced Technologies & Treatments for Diabetes and published in the Journal of the Endocrine Society, showed that every participant used CGM for the full study and the personalized support enabled them to improve their glycemic outcomes and quality of life.
The more robust study taking place at the Jaeb Center under the new grant will also include CGM-naïve individuals receiving diabetes care from their PCP but will engage 300 individuals with types 1 and 2 diabetes nationwide for six months. In addition to help with remote CGM onboarding, a virtual clinic team including CDCESs from Cecelia Health will provide insulin dosing advice. The team of Cecelia Health will be using the DreaMed Advisor Platform which will include a comprehensive data system that can pull information from CGM, SMBG, insulin pumps and connected insulin pens, visualized it for the healthcare provider and for the participants through web and mobile application as well as operate decision support algorithms to optimize insulin treatment plan for people with type 1/type 2 on insulin pumps or multiple daily injections therapy. To address the prevalence of mental health issues in people with diabetes, the virtual clinic team will include licensed psychologists and behavioral health coaches who can lend support to participants to address diabetes-related challenges. The study will evaluate CGM use over time, glycemic- and participant-reported outcomes, healthcare utilization and cost, use of decision support tools, and assess the need and impact of mental health services...