SmartStart Health: Unlocking life​-​changing benefits of CGM in diabetes

Overwhelming amount of CGM data

When people with diabetes/caregivers start using CGM to gain tighter diabetes control, they face a steep learning curve, regardless of how many years they have lived with diabetes. They’re overwhelmed by hundreds of data points per day, trend arrows and fine-tuning settings for alerts and alarms. They are aware that CGM can be a powerful tool for minimising high and low blood glucose levels and improving their quality of life, but they aren’t sure how to achieve these outcomes. Without timely support to use CGM effectively, people with diabetes/caregivers may see CGM data as clear documentation of diabetes management challenges they feel they cannot overcome.

SmartStart CGM as an innovative solution for CGM education

Education is important for people using CGM to be able to understand and use CGM data to make appropriate treatment decisions that lead to quality of life benefits as well as improvements in diabetes outcomes. SmartStart Health is rising to the challenge of CGM-specific patient education with SmartStart CGM, a user-friendly smartphone app. Supported by DCB, diabetes centres in the US and Switzerland will evaluate the new scalable solution in a proof-of-concept study. The partnership aims to analyse the results in Q3 2022 and publish by mid-2023.

The SmartStart CGM app is designed to inform and empower users with interactive micro-learning based on real-world scenarios that reflect the reality of living with diabetes. A telehealth portal for healthcare professionals will enable clinicians to assess patient engagement with the programme.

Project team: Melissa Holloway (Founder & CEO), Kieron Heath (Operations), Effra Digital (Technology consultant), Will Hargreaves (Business development), Jamie Welsh (Content development)

Funding: DCB supports SmartStart Health with 100k CHF funding