Digital Diabetes Congress 2018

Digital health is capturing the attention of the healthcare community. This paradigm whereby healthcare meets the internet uses sensors that communicate wirelessly along with software residing on smartphones to deliver data, information, treatment recommendations, and in some cases control over an effector device. As artificial intelligence becomes more widely used, this approach to creating individualized treatment plans will increase the opportunities for patients, even if they are in remote settings, to communicate with and learn from healthcare professionals. Simple design is needed to promote use of these tools, especially for the purpose of increased adherence to treatment. Widespread adoption by the healthcare industry will require better outcomes data, which will most likely be in the form of safety and effectiveness results from robust randomized controlled trials, as well as evidence of privacy and security. Such data will be needed to convince investors to direct resources into and regulators to clear new digital health tools. Diabetes Technology Society and William Sansum Diabetes Center launched the Digital Diabetes Congress in 2017 because of great interest in determining the potential benefits, metrics of success, and appropriate components of mobile applications for diabetes. The second annual meeting in this series took place on May 22-23, 2018 in San Francisco. This report contains summaries of the meeting's 4 plenary lectures and 10 sessions. This meeting report presents a summary of how 55 panelists, speakers, and moderators, who are leaders in healthcare technology, see the current and future landscape of digital health tools applied to diabetes.