Efficacy of a basal insulin dose management smartphone application for controlling fasting blood glucose in patients with type-2 diabetes mellitus: A single-centre, randomised clinical study.

OBJECTIVE

To explore the efficacy and safety of the 'Walk with you' application for titrating basal insulin (BI) doses in type-2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) hospitalised patients.

METHODS

This was a randomised, single-centre, open-label, controlled clinical trial to compare the changes in fasting blood glucose (FBG) and postprandial blood glucose (PBG), time to reach target FBG (FBG-TRT), incidence of hypoglycaemia events and FBG coefficient of variation in the application group (weight-based titration of BI dose regimen) and control group (typical adjustment regimen).

PATIENTS

This study selected 173 patients with T2DM using basal-prandial insulin therapy who were admitted to Binhaiwan Central Hospital of Dongguan between December 2021 and December 2022. Patients were randomised to the control group or the application group (App group) and then titrated to achieve an FBG concentration of less than 7.0 mmol/L.

RESULTS

There were 86 patients in the control group and 87 patients in the App group. The FBG concentrations in the control and App groups were decreased by 6.77 ± 4.75 and 5.95 ± 4.06 mmol/L, respectively. The FBG-TRTs in the control and App groups were 3.80 ± 1.52 and 2.82 ± 1.34 days, respectively (p < .001). Fewer patients in the control group reached the FBG-TRT within 3 days than in the App group, with 46.5% and 71.3% of patients reaching that target, respectively. There was no significant between-group difference in hypoglycaemia incidence.

CONCLUSION

The use of this weight-based insulin dose titration protocol for BI app is effective and safe for achieving the target FBG in noncritically ill patients with T2DM and is free, easy to use and user friendly.