The Barbara Davis Center for Diabetes at University of Colorado School of Medicine, a center of excellence for treating people with diabetes using technology, and DreaMed Diabetes (“DreaMed” or the “Company”), a developer of the diabetes expert-care AI platform, announced today the launch of a new three-year project aiming at increasing the availability of diabetes management technology for patients across multiple care settings.
Led by Laurel Messer, Ph.D., at the Barbara Davis Center, and 10 co-investigators, the project aims to empower University of Colorado health providers in adopting the latest relevant medical devices and technologies when caring for their diabetes patients. The project title is SEEDS: Shared Empowerment for Early Device Success.
This is the first project focused on diabetes device initiation that seeks to empower a variety of medical disciplines – from primary care physicians to pediatric and adult endocrinologists. The aim is to enable medical professionals without expertise in diabetes technology to competently prescribe and engage with diabetes devices such as continuous glucose monitors and insulin pumps, thus improving care of people with diabetes.
Dr. Messer will work with DreaMed to expand the DreaMed clinical decision support platform to support patients and care providers in the primary care setting. “There are various types of diabetes technologies that can help people with diabetes,” Messer says. “But only a very limited number of providers really know enough about those devices or are willing to prescribe them to their patients, because they don’t have time to learn about them and figure out how to use the data effectively. The partnership with DreaMed will allow us not only to help providers adopt these technologies as part of their regular routine but also empower them to optimize their therapy using the DreaMed Advisor technology.”
“We are truly honored to be part of this project,” said Ryan Hovey, general manager for North America at DreaMed. “We have been able to demonstrate the ability to support endocrinology practices by centralizing patient device data as well as providing evaluation reports and FDA cleared treatment recommendations. The opportunity to apply this technology to primary care, where most patients with diabetes are treated, is what is exciting here. If we can bring our tools and technologies to everyone who needs them, especially disadvantaged populations, then our mission is served.”
The project will also track financial deployment metrics in order to build a sustainable economic model for health systems. University of Colorado assistant professor of clinical pharmacy in the Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences Robert Brett McQueen, Ph.D., will collect and track all relevant financial metrics to calculate the return on investment, economic sustainability, and provider and user satisfaction. The data will be shared with DreaMed and disseminated in the scientific literature on health economics.
The $2.7 million project is funded by The Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust. Helmsley’s Type 1 Diabetes Program is deeply committed to supporting projects that modernize care models, particularly for underserved communities, and improve access to management tools for all type 1 diabetes patients, as well as those that broaden the use of technology to advance both goals.
“Countless people living with diabetes across the country lack access to the devices and care that can make it easier for them to take on the incredibly difficult task of managing blood glucose levels 24/7,” said Sean Sullivan, Ph.D., program officer for Helmsley’s Type 1 Diabetes Program. “At Helmsley, we believe that neither geography nor income levels should dictate health outcomes. By empowering all diabetes providers to prescribe and engage with diabetes technologies, using decision support technology, the SEEDS program has the potential to change the game and enable increased access and use of these technologies for all people with diabetes.”