While mobile app developers have created a range of software tools to help people with diabetes manage their conditions, evidence to support mobile health apps in general is limited, and questions about how well the technologies work in diabetes remain unanswered.
Accordingly, researchers in the UK have sought to evaluate the data on diabetes apps by reviewing the results of 25 clinical trials comprising 3,360 patients. The review linked the use of digital health technologies to improvements in blood sugar, as measured by HbA1c.
The researchers found that the technologies improved blood sugar: the difference in HbA1c compared to standard care was -0.56% for Type 1 diabetes, -0.90% for Type 2 diabetes and -0.26% for prediabetes.
However, there are some caveats, including the researchers questioning if the effect on blood sugar was driven by the technologies, noting that a “study with a narrower focus on newly and recently diagnosed patients may yield different results.”
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