Continuous Glucose Monitoring: What Should Clinicians Do With All That Data?
In this Roundtable Wrap-Up, we offer an abbreviated version of the roundtable discussion on the multidisciplinary approach to managing patients with diabetes, the value of utilizing the services of a certified diabetes care and education specialist, the importance of lifestyle changes and diabetes self-care and management, and more.
Additional Resources:
- For more expert insights on the mutlidisciplinary approach to managing patients with diabetes, watch the full Multidisciplinary Roundtable.
- For more diabetes content, visit the disease state hub.
The content below has been edited for space and clarity.
Hope Warshaw, MMSc, RD, CDCES, BC-ADM on continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) and the potential for data overload among primary care physicians
The availability of CGM is incredible. It has given so much data for us clinicians. But I think a challenge really in the primary care world is, 'Oh my, God. What do I do with all this data?' I think again, that's where a Certified Diabetes Care and Education Specialist can be extremely helpful in helping people select a device to determine what they can have covered, to train them on using the device, and then really to utilize the data.
Carol Wysham, MD on the use of CGM for her practice
I think the CGM has been absolutely monumental for my practice with patients that have Type 1 diabetes as well as those patients with Type 2 diabetes on insulin.
Eugene E. Wright, Jr., MD on how he thinks about CGMs and the advantages that they preset for both physicians and patients
There's two statements that I can make that really summarizes this. First, I use CGM as a tool to facilitate an intervention, and that intervention is not always on my part. Many times it's on the part of the patient. The second thing that I would say about CGM and the ambulatory glucose profile is that it has the ability to take a large data stream, a large amount of data collected over 10 to 14 days, and convert that, transform that, if you will, into actionable information. The way that it does that is it organizes it, analyzes it, summarizes it, and it presents it in a graphic form that even my colleagues and my patients who may have trouble with numbers can see and recognize patterns and trends and make sound recommendations on behavior and medications based on that.
Dr Warshaw on why it is necessary to facilitate conversations about the patient experience with CGM
I think it's so important with this disease, diabetes, to engage someone in their care. It is probably the most self-managed disease that we see. The more that we enable that person to be aware of the whys of the numbers and the actions that they can take in their daily management to achieve the goals or time and range that we're talking about, I think we're going to be better off. So making a person the manager of their diabetes and less dependent on coming to one of us once in 3 months or twice a year.