Broadband-Based Television Portal for Diabetes Self-Care

糖尿病是美国最昂贵和最具破坏性的慢性疾病之一，每年直接医疗和其他间接费用超过1300亿美元，导致20多万人死亡。由于糖尿病在老年人中更为普遍，预计随着美国人口老龄化，糖尿病将成为一个问题。重要的是要找到新的方法来保持糖尿病患者的健康，以减少这种疾病日益增长的医疗，经济和社会代价。一个重要的方法是支持糖尿病患者的医疗自我护理活动。 该项目的长期目标是将BL Healthcare，Inc.开发的技术平台商业化。它可以将糖尿病自我护理的三个重要功能--健康状态监测和报告、患者教育以及与卫生保健提供者的沟通--集中在一台标准电视上。通过使用基于宽带的技术，该技术平台可以为糖尿病患者的疾病自我护理活动提供先进水平的支持，同时以比同等现有方法低得多的成本这样做。该平台的设计是易于使用的一个简单的遥控器。图形界面能够从远程服务器向电视机传送信息丰富的多媒体教育，而不需要PC。“电视友好”格式有助于克服识字障碍。 在这个项目中，项目小组将首先为已经开发的接口开发一套软件，以便将生命体征的无线监测、交互式多媒体患者教育内容和电子通信集成到标准电视上。这个糖尿病的“自我护理门户”将通过一个简单的遥控器进行导航。完成的平台将在24名II型糖尿病患者中进行为期90天的测试，以评估受试者对该门户网站的可用性和有用性的评估。该研究还将比较研究受试者对糖尿病及其管理的理解与对照组的变化，以了解这种方法是否可以提高患者对糖尿病自我护理的理解水平。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Diabetes is one of the most costly and destructive chronic diseases in the U.S. Each year it accounts for over $130 billion in direct medical and other indirect costs, and contributes to the death of over 200,000 people. Since diabetes is more prevalent in older people, it is expected to grow as a problem with the aging of the U.S. population. It is important to find new approaches to keeping people with diabetes healthy in order to reduce the growing medical, economic and social toll of this disease. One important way to do so is to support the medical self-care activities of people living with diabetes. The long-term objectives of this project is to commercialize a technology platform developed by BL Healthcare, Inc. that can bring together three important functions of diabetes self-care-health status monitoring and reporting, patient education, and communication with health care providers-on a standard television. By using a broadband-based technology, this technology platform can provide a sophisticated level of support for disease self-care activities of persons with diabetes, while doing so at substantially less cost than an equivalent existing approach. The platform is designed to be easy to use with a simple remote control. The graphic interface is able to deliver information-rich multimedia education to the television set from a remote server without needing a PC. The "TV friendly" format helps overcome literacy barriers. In this project, the project team will first develop a set of software for an already-developed interface so that wireless monitoring of vital signs, interactive multimedia patient education content, and electronic communications can be integrated onto a standard television. This "self-care portal" for diabetes will be then be made navigable with a simple remote control. The completed platform will be tested in 24 persons with type II diabetes over a 90-day period to evaluate the subjects' assessment of the usability and usefulness of this portal. The study will also compare study subjects' changes in understanding about diabetes and its management with a control group to see if this approach can improve patients' level of understanding of diabetes self-care.