UM File # 4984

Background
Diabetes is a disease that involves a loss of control of blood glucose to various extents due to a lack of insulin production or usage by the body. The disease can cause a variety of serious problems ranging from hypoglycemia to cardiovascular failure and even coma if not treated. Patients and clinicians who undergo regular treatment for diabetes are familiar with the numerous conventional metrics for continuous monitoring blood glucose level. The most common criterion of diabetes is having a high amount of glycated haemoglobin (HbA1c) in the bloodstream. However, patients with the same amount of HbA1c can exhibit a high degree of variability between patients. Despite this problem, many investigators have still not adequately adopted the use of multiple metrics to evalutate the glycemic variation of the patient, due to the sometimes difficult and tedious coding that is necessary.

Technology Description
An interdisciplinary team of researchers from the University of Michigan has compiled an extensive list of glucose monitoring metrics and statistical measures to create a graphical interface for diabetes evaluation (CGM-GUIDE), which allows clinicians to enter patient data and adjust metric parameters in a user-friendly manner. In addition, a new measure that emphasizes the dynamics of transitions between defined glucose states is introduced in the GUI. The researchers perform a clinical study using the metrics included in CGM-GUIDE on patients with type 1 diabetes and compare them to non-diabetic literature values. They believe that CGM-GUIDE provides a superior assessment of a patient's glucose landscape, and anticipate the use of integrated glycemic measurements to supplement current standards.

Applications
• New tool to micro-manage diabetes treatment

Advantages
• Better quantification of glucose fluctuations in patients

File Number: 4984