Li Ying, Tan Jin, Shi Bozhi, Duan Xiaolian, Zhong Daidi, Li Xiaoling, Qu Jianning
Key Laboratory of Biorcheological Science and Technology, Ministry of Education, Bioengineering College, Chongqing University, Chongqing, China.
Chongqing Academy of Science & Technology, Chongqing, China.
JMIR Diabetes. 2016 Apr 6;1(1):e2. doi: 10.2196/diabetes.4475.
For patients with diabetes, the self-monitoring of blood glucose (SMBG) is a recommended way of controlling the blood glucose level. By leveraging the modern information and communication technology (ICT) and the corresponding infrastructure, engineers nowadays are able to merge the SMBG activities into daily life and to dramatically reduce patient's burden. Such type of ICT-powered SMBG had already been marketed in the United States and the European Union for a decade, but was introduced into the Chinese market only in recent years. Although there is no doubt about the general need for such type of SMBG in the Chinese market, how it could be adapted to the local technical and operational environment is still an open question.
Our overall goal is to understand the local requirements and the current status of deploying ICT-powered SMBG to the Chinese market. In particular, we aim to analyze existing domestic SMBG mobile apps and relevant domestic patents to identify their various aspects, including the common functionalities, innovative feature, defects, conformance to standards, prospects, etc. In the long run, we hope the outcome of this study could help the decision making on how to properly adapt ICT-powered SMBG to the Chinese market.
We identified 289 apps. After exclusion of irrelevant apps, 78 apps remained. These were downloaded and analyzed. A total of 8070 patents related to glucose were identified from patent database. Irrelevant materials and duplicates were excluded, following which 39 patents were parsed to extract the important features. These apps and patents were further compared with the corresponding requirements derived from relevant clinical guidelines and data standards.
The most common features of studied apps were blood health data recording, notification, and decision supporting. The most common features of studied patents included mobile terminal, server, and decision supporting. The main difference between patents and apps is that the patents had 2 specific features, namely, interface to the hospital information system and recording personal information, which were not mentioned in the app. The other major finding is that, in general, in terms of the components of the features, although the features identified in both apps and patents conform to the requirements of the relevant clinical guidelines and data standards, upon looking into the details, gaps exist between the features of the identified apps and patents and the relevant clinical guidelines and data standards. In addition, the social media feature that the apps and patents have is not included in the standard requirements list.
The development of Chinese SMBG mobile apps and relevant patents is still in the primitive stage. Although the functionalities of most apps and patents can meet the basic requirements of SMBG, gaps have been identified when comparing the functionalities provided by apps and patents with the requirements necessitated by the standards. One of the most important gaps is that only a small portion of the studied apps provides the automatic data transmission and exchange feature, which may hamper the overall performance. The clinical guidelines can thus be further developed to leverage new features provided by ICT-powered SMBG apps (eg, the social media feature, which may help to improve the social intervention of patients with diabetes).
对于糖尿病患者而言，自我血糖监测（SMBG）是控制血糖水平的一种推荐方式。借助现代信息通信技术（ICT）及相应基础设施，如今工程师们能够将自我血糖监测活动融入日常生活，并显著减轻患者负担。这种由ICT驱动的自我血糖监测已在美国和欧盟上市十年，但近年来才引入中国市场。尽管中国市场对这类自我血糖监测的总体需求毋庸置疑，但如何使其适应本地技术和运营环境仍是个悬而未决的问题。
我们的总体目标是了解将由ICT驱动的自我血糖监测应用于中国市场的本地需求和现状。具体而言，我们旨在分析现有的国内自我血糖监测移动应用程序和相关国内专利，以确定其各个方面，包括常见功能、创新特性、缺陷、符合标准情况、前景等。从长远来看，我们希望本研究结果有助于就如何使由ICT驱动的自我血糖监测适当地适应中国市场做出决策。
我们识别出289个应用程序。排除不相关的应用程序后，剩下78个应用程序。对这些应用程序进行下载和分析。从专利数据库中识别出总共8070项与血糖相关的专利。排除不相关材料和重复项后，对39项专利进行解析以提取重要特征。将这些应用程序和专利与从相关临床指南和数据标准得出的相应要求进一步进行比较。
所研究应用程序最常见的特征是血液健康数据记录、通知和决策支持。所研究专利最常见的特征包括移动终端、服务器和决策支持。专利与应用程序的主要区别在于，专利有两个特定特征，即与医院信息系统的接口和记录个人信息，而应用程序中未提及。另一个主要发现是，总体而言，就特征的组成部分而言，尽管在应用程序和专利中识别出的特征符合相关临床指南和数据标准的要求，但深入细节后，所识别的应用程序和专利的特征与相关临床指南和数据标准之间存在差距。此外，应用程序和专利所具有的社交媒体功能未包含在标准要求列表中。
中国自我血糖监测移动应用程序和相关专利的开发仍处于初级阶段。尽管大多数应用程序和专利的功能能够满足自我血糖监测的基本要求，但将应用程序和专利提供的功能与标准所要求的功能进行比较时，已发现存在差距。最重要的差距之一是，在所研究的应用程序中，只有一小部分提供自动数据传输和交换功能，这可能会妨碍整体性能。因此，可以进一步制定临床指南，以利用由ICT驱动的自我血糖监测应用程序提供的新功能（例如，社交媒体功能，这可能有助于改善糖尿病患者的社会干预）。
