Smartphone App Helps Doctors Control Patients' Diabetes

A new guide to diabetes is now available on all smart phone devices for physicians, nurses, and other health care providers, providing up-to-date information on the growing epidemic.

Developed by researcher at Johns Hopkins University (Baltimore, MD, USA), the POC-IT Diabetes Guide is a portable, easily searchable, and quickly navigated resource that helps providers, particularly during patient visits, make the best clinical decisions. The guide provides real-time evidence-based electronic clinical decision support resources to help health care professionals raise the standard of care, and improve patient safety on everything from diabetes management to complications to medications.

Among the sections covered in the guide are an overview of diabetes; management of the disease in both general and special situations with diagnostic and treatment suggestions, complications and comorbidities; medication options, including indications, dosages, side effects and drug interactions; and indication and interpretation of clinical, laboratory, and radiological tests available. It is currently available on smart phones and the internet, and a print version will be released in the spring of 2011. The electronic guide will be regularly updated with the latest developments in diabetes care.

"It offers almost instant, at-a-glance access to the latest consensus guidelines and expert opinions on a broad spectrum of topics in diabetes care,” said Rita Rastogi Kalyani, M.D., an assistant professor of medicine in the JHU division of endocrinology and the guide's managing editor. "Hopkins' mission is to share its knowledge with the world and this is a practical way to do that.”

The POC-IT Diabetes Guide is the third POC-IT guide developed at JHU, with successful guides on antibiotics and HIV already on the market.

Related Links:
Johns Hopkins University
POC-IT Diabetes Guide