The National Institute of Nursing Research, part of the National Institutes of Health, recently awarded Ryan Shaw, PhD, RN, assistant professor for Duke University School of Nursing (DUSON), almost $480,000 for his study titled “From Episodic to Real-Time Care in Diabetes Self-Management.” The study will run for a three-year period.

Type 2 diabetes is a serious problem in the U.S., and self-management is critical to diabetes control. However, accurate, timely information for monitoring and self-management is notably absent from the current health care system. Providing real-time data would help patients and their care providers better understand illness dynamics, develop adaptive approaches to improve health outcomes and deliver personalized care when and where it is most needed.

“Use of emerging mobile health technologies to share real-time data with patients and their health care providers can change care delivery from infrequent, episodic delivery to care at the point when patients need it most,” said Shaw. “Thus, use of mobile health technologies to rapidly assess and modify behavior has the potential to transform and greatly improve self-management for individuals with chronic diseases such as diabetes.”

The study will analyze data collected by 50 patients who have type 2 diabetes. The patients will track relevant information over six months using a wireless body scale, phone-tethered glucometer, a wrist-worn accelerometer- such as a Fitbit- and a medication adherence text message survey. The data produced from the devices will be analyzed to help the researchers understand the adaptive challenges that patients face in self-management.

This study will provide the foundation for the development of interventions to facilitate patient-provider collaboration using mobile health technologies and evidence-based algorithms that deliver automated messages to patients in real time.

“The results will serve as the corner stone for our next step, a clinical trial to test the efficacy of this approach in diabetes self-management and clinical care,” said Shaw.

Shaw will be joined by three other co-investigators in this research project: Allison Vorderstrasse, DNSc, APRN, CNE, FAAN, associate professor for DUSON; Qing Yang, PhD, assistant professor for DUSON; and Dori Steinberg, PhD, RD, research scholar for the Duke Global Health Institute. Matthew Crowley, MD, assistant professor in the Duke University School of Medicine, will also assist in this study.