Statistics show that diabetes is among the top ten causes of death in the world. The disease does not only cause death but also leads to various chronic complications like infections, major pathological changes occurring in kidneys, retina or nerve system, and hypoglycemia. The cost of treatment for diabetes is high causing medical professionals to come up with means of ensuring less number of people suffer from diabetes. With the high rate of technology advancement, doctors and physicians have come up with mobile web portals that give advice to people on how to prevent diabetes, and for those who are already victims provide disease management tips. Below is a list of three best web portals for diabetes management.
- Medicine net management system
- Diabetes Australia Web Portal
- American Diabetes Association Web portal
Medicinenet management system
Procedure and architecture
According to Medicinenet.com (2014), mobile diabetes management follows seven essential principles. The procedures provided in this site are aimed at assisting every person suffering from diabetes overcome the disease and increase their chances of survival through following simple instructions provided on a mobile application. According to the author, diabetes affects almost every part of the body, and in order to overcome the problem a victim requires a team of qualified healthcare providers. The procedure used on this website follows seven steps. Learning more about diabetes is procedure that calls for individuals to gather more information about types of diabetes, their causes, and how to control them. One can easily communicate their symptoms and get served by a team of experts connected on the other side. Most health professionals claim that diabetes is a very serious disease, but many people have no information about its management. Appendix 1 clearly shows the stages followed in an effective diabetes management program. These are the procedures recommended by Medicine net web portal.
Functionalities
The medicine net web portals functions by providing patients with ideas on how to manage diabetes even with the absence of a health care provider. The main agenda of introducing this mobile application websites was to make the public more aware of the causes, prevention, and management of diabetes. In addition, it functions as information carriers to health care professionals because it records patient’s feedbacks about the treatment offered by medical practitioners. On the other hand, Medicine net is designed to help people search for specific information regarding the disease in terms of causes, treatments, best health care providers, and how to manage people affected by the disease (O’Connor & Sperl-Hillen 2009). Appendix II illustrates how the web portal functions.
Diabetes Australia web portal
Procedure and architecture
This web portal is significance in mobile diabetes management and was designed by a team from Australia focusing on best practice guidelines for health professionals. The procedures listed on this website provide the best-practice guidelines that most healthcare professionals use in the management and treatment of diabetes. The website provides a mobile application that users can download on their mobile phones and use it to check on daily updates about diabetes. The website provides an insight to many issues related to diabetes management. The road through the treatment and cure of diabetes is also provided. According to Diabetes Australia (2014), every nation must consider collecting data on diabetes infections in order to know the disease prevalence. The national evidence based guidelines for management of diabetes provide a comprehensive set of procedures that healthcare professionals use to control the disease.
Functionalities
The Diabetes Australia web portals discussed above measures patient response from management practices provided in the website. It offers essential benefits to patients and health care providers by functioning as a link between the two. The technology shown on this portal is integrated with electronic health records (HER) to increase the potential of access to care. In addition, it has features that promote effective electronic communication between patients and health care providers, scheduling of appointments, payment of deals, and medical prescriptions (Emont 2011).
American Diabetes Association
Procedure and architecture
The third web portal is involved in redesigning the health care team: diabetes prevention and lifelong management created by the American Diabetes Association. The above web portal was developed after a realization that diabetes was taking lives of many citizens who were ignorant of its prevention and management practices. The procedures given on this website are similar to the ones given on the previous websites, but giving more emphasis on collaboration between healthcare providers. On the other hand, the web portal provides guidelines on how individuals should live a diabetes free life through giving different life tips (The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2013).
The architectural design of this website aimed at providing guidelines to assist healthcare professionals and healthcare organizations come up with a team of care providers for children and adults with diabetes. The main architectural approach used in this web portal on mobile diabetes management is aimed at showing the outcomes of diabetes education conducted through mobile phones globally. American Health professionals call upon doctors and physicians to come up with reports about the issue of diabetes infections in their respective areas, and suggest to the public on the best measures that they should follow to control the disease prevalence. The main requirements for this diabetes management architectural program is commitment and support from organizational leadership, active participation of health care providers and patients, identification of patient population using information tracking systems, availability of adequate resources, good coordination of communication systems, and evaluation and documentation of research outcomes.
Functionalities
The systems function best on patients who are unable to get proper education on diabetes, but have access to internet through their mobile phones. These groups of patient are mostly people working during the day and are unable to attend their scheduled hospital visits after work because of home commitments. The system functions to update such individuals and allow them communicate with their health care providers about the type of cure to adopt and the dosage. Appendix II shows how this web portals function in the control and intervention of diabetes at different levels of infection.
Conclusion
The above web portals provide readers with well explained procedures and ways of managing diabetes. These are mobile applications that allow people suffering from diabetes easier access to disease control and management practices. The procedures involved in these web portals are very easy and anyone with an internet enabled mobile phone has the ability to use them. Information Technology (IT) experts have developed software systems that allow people to receive information regarding diabetes management in their mobile handsets at the comfort of their houses. On the other hand, the mobile technology has changes the modes of diabetes management from the traditional methods because patients can easily and efficiently communicate with health care providers any time they need help. The architecture used on these applications is aimed at enabling a patient, or care providers follow the simple procedures provided in the web portal while paying more attention to key rules that must be followed.
References list
DIABETES AUSTRALIA. (2013). Best Practice Guidelines for Health Professionals. –
Diabetes Australia. Retrieved May 31, 2014, from:
http://www.diabetesaustralia.com.au/For-Health-Professionals/Diabetes-National-Guidelines/#National-Evidence-Based-Guidelines-for-the-Management-of-Type-2-Diabetes
EMONT SETH. (2011). Measuring the impact of Patient Portals: What the Literature Tells Us.
California Health Care Foundation.
MEDICINENET. (2012). The 7 Principles for Good Diabetes Care on
MedicineNet.com. MedicineNet. Retrieved May 31, 2014, from: http://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=21656
THE U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES. (2013). Redesigning the
health care team: Diabetes prevention and lifelong management. Retrieved from:
http://ndep.nih.gov/media/NDEP37_RedesignTeamCare_4c_508.pdf?redirect=true
O’CONNOR P, J. & SPERL-HILLEN J. M. (2009). “The role of diabetes educators in the
medical home”, Diabetes Spectrum, 22(2): 124-6.
Appendices
Appendix I: Management procedure for diabetes
Appendix II: Functioning of the Medicine net mobile web portal
Appendix III: Diabetes control and intervention practices
