Technology to deal with the diabetes pandemic
Currently, around 41 million people in Latin America and 400 million people in the world have diabetes. This figure continues to grow over time, to the extent that it is estimated that by 2040 there will be 68 million diabetics in the region.
"Diabetes, which was the pandemic we were all talking about before COVID-19 arrived, is a challenge for health systems and a threat to their financial sustainability," says María Jesús Salido, CEO of Social Diabetes, a startup that provides a mobile application that allows patients to use various digital tools for monitoring and analysis in diabetic patients that will help improve the quality of life of more than 1 million people in the next two years.
Diabetes is one of the main health challenges of the 21st century, according to the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO). Data from the organisation indicate that the number of people suffering from this pathology will rise to 642 million worldwide by 2040. One of the advantages of this solution is that it allows the patient to be in contact with a health professional remotely, thus avoiding the need to travel to a health centre and reducing the chances of contracting COVID-19 in this high-risk group.
"We believe that diabetes management depends more on the patients than on the system. So, if we want to accelerate the response, we have to deliver this technology to patients and digitise the therapy so that it is the users themselves who make intelligent use of this data and the health systems, in turn, contribute and generate assistance around all this data," added María Jesús Salido.
The use of this platform gives patients and doctors more complete visibility of the data generated by their care and the monitoring of their glucose and insulin, as well as streamlining processes. "Before the app, what I didn't have was the insulin calculation on board. I wrote everything down somewhere else or in a notebook. Of course, suddenly getting the notebook out was a bit tedious. Now I have the benefit of always knowing, at all times, how much insulin I have left in my body, for example," says Carlos Soto, a 31-year-old patient from Chile.
Social Diabetes is a startup based in Barcelona, London and Mexico City, leader in the Hispanic market for digital solutions and one of the most prestigious platforms for diabetes management worldwide. With the purpose of expanding coverage throughout the region to improve the wellbeing of the population, CAF -development bank of Latin America- made a co-investment with the Venture Innovation Fund II (VIFII), managed by ALLVP of Mexico, in this startup.
This solution has a digital diabetes management platform composed of two elements. A mobile application for mobile phones that allows them to keep their diabetes under control and have a more flexible and safer life. And on the other hand the web platform that allows healthcare professionals to remotely manage patients and make use of data to deliver more personalised and efficient care.
"The app gives me a global overview of how my son's glycaemia is behaving," says Nasly Montoya, originally from Medellín, Colombia, and mother of a 9-year-old boy with type 1 diabetes. "This app gives us the opportunity to download the information from the reports when we go to see the doctor. It is an application that has improved our quality of life and has been very positive for both me and my son".
The app has generated additional benefits in times of the COVID-19 pandemic, when face-to-face consultations were impossible. "I can communicate with my doctor at any time from wherever I am. Every time I record my glucose levels, my doctor knows and this helps me to make decisions on a day-to-day basis and not wait until the consultation," explains Erika Backhoff, a Mexican patient who has been living with type 1 diabetes since the age of 13. "This, in times of pandemic where face-to-face consultations have become more telemedicine, has helped me a lot to make decisions.
The world is facing an unprecedented global crisis in the healthcare sector, so it is important to support the implementation of technology solutions, such as Social Diabetes, in order to jointly instrument regional growth and continue to support the millions of people with these conditions.
Fernando Ehlers, senior communications executive at CAF
Visiones del Desarrollo is a section promoted by CAF -development bank of Latin America- that analyses the main development issues in the region. The articles it contains are published simultaneously in the main Latin American media.