Digital solution for individualized diabetes care

Many of us can relate to the difficulty of reading and understanding jargon-heavy content. Chances are that you have clicked on “accept” without reading through the full terms and conditions, or threw the manual out before knowing how a device works. Written in complex language, these pieces are often lengthy, and their impact on daily life remains unclear. Physicians can be in a similar situation, particularly general practitioners, or family doctors. Family doctors cover and assess a large range of diseases. Each of these has its own treatment guidelines. Because family doctors tend to be the first point of medical contact for a patient, this often determines how quickly a disease can be diagnosed and how efficiently it is treated. Not being up to date with the guidelines as a family doctor can have serious consequences. Disease guidelines are constantly evolving, and keeping track while managing a busy day-to-day is not only a daunting task but also very time consuming. 

Offering a solution was the driving factor behind the cross-functional Exandra™ team comprised of medical professionals, data scientists and software engineers. Grant Groves, Exandra™ Global Asset Lead, looks back at the beginning of the project and remembers: “In our preliminary talks with doctors and organizations, it became clear that support is extremely needed and that we needed to improve access to the guidelines to enable the best care possible.” 

The team wanted to create a tool that was more than a digital version of the guidelines; they wanted logic behind it. “It had to be a tool that ensured that guidelines were understood, but also gave concrete and individual, patient-specific treatment recommendations. A tool that was intuitive and easy to use for every healthcare professional – not only IT experts or digital natives,” Grant adds. 

How the idea for the digital solution came to life

Especially for diabetes, there are an incredibly high number of different guidelines. Diabetes is a complex disease since it can be interconnected with other cardio renal metabolic diseases and is dependent on many factors like hormones, age and genetics. No two cases are the same. That’s why it’s particularly important that it is treated with the right medication and dose. “When the project started in 2020, we decided to focus on Canada because their guidelines are very comprehensive and moreover consider comorbidities such as heart failure, chronic kidney disease and hypertension. That was a great basis, so the decision was easy to make for us”, remarks Grant. “The goal was to make the lives of family doctors easier and thereby improve the individualized treatment of diabetes. It became apparent to the team that the solution could be Exandra™.” 

To be successful, a close collaboration of many different departments and experts was essential. It required both experts from the respective medical field and technological specialists who built the software and created a user-friendly interface that doctors could easily navigate. Our digital lab BI X collaborated with the business from the beginning. From the early ideation, moving to the minimum viable product and developing the first prototype that was tested in a one-year pilot with 100 healthcare professionals. After making some adjustments and the tool production ready, Exandra™ was prepared to be launched. 

From challenge to take off 

A very special challenge while developing the digital solution was the pandemic: “Due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the restrictions we had to do everything remotely: The research, the development and the exchange with doctors, customers, and organizations. That was a big hurdle. In addition, most doctors had understandably very different priorities at the time and were busy with the pandemic,” states Grant. However: “We were convinced that we were creating a product that really had an impact.” Indeed, all healthcare professionals in Canada have now access to the tool. Within the first few weeks, there were already over 500 practitioners that have registered. And the family doctors’ feedback? “They tell us the tool saves plenty of time, reduces stress of keeping up with guidelines and improves their confidence in treating diabetes,” Grant is proud. “The tool allows doctors to focus more on the patient itself, which was our main goal.”

What’s next?

This digital solution will not end with diabetes patients in Canada. Complex guidelines exist in many disease areas and the goal is to make the tool available not only for other countries, but for other disease areas.

How does Exandra™ work? 

Based on the individual information about the patient, such as the current medication or comorbidities, the family doctor gets insights into the latest and relevant guidelines. What they also get is a concrete recommendation for treatment and whether, for example, adjustments in type or dose of medication need to be made or whether any specific cautions need to be considered. 

References

¹ Guideline Adherence and Associated Oultcomes in the Treatment of Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus Patients With an Incident Cardiovascular Comorbidity: An Analysis Based on a Large German Claims Dataset, Maximilian Gabler et all, March 2021