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Designing the Glucose Telemetry for Hospital Management: From Bedside to the Nursing Station

  • Health Care Delivery Systems and Implementation in Diabetes (ME McDonnell and AR Sadhu, Section Editors)
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Abstract

Purpose of the Review

Hospitalized patients with diabetes are monitored with point-of-care glucose testing. Continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) devices represent an alternative way to monitor glucose values; however, the in-hospital CGM use is still considered experimental. Most inpatient studies used “blinded” CGM properties and only few used the real-time/unblinded CGM features. One major limitation of the CGM devices is that they need to be placed at the patients’ bedside, limiting any therapeutic interventions. In this article, we review the real-time/unblinded CGM use and share our thoughts about the development of future inpatient CGM systems.

Recent Findings

We recently reported that glucose values can be wirelessly transmitted to the nursing station, providing remote continuous glucose monitoring.

Summary

Future inpatient CGM devices may be utilized for patients at risk for hypoglycemia similarly to the way that we use cardiac telemetry to monitor hospitalized patients who are at increased risk for cardiac arrhythmias.

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Funding

This work was supported in part by the VA MERIT award (#1I01CX001825-01) from the United States (U.S.) Department of Veterans Affairs Clinical Sciences Research and Development Service.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Division of Endocrinology, Diabetes, and Nutrition, University of Maryland School of Medicine, 827 Linden Avenue, Baltimore, MD, 21201, USA

    Medha Satyarengga, Tariq Siddiqui & Elias K. Spanakis

  2. Division of Endocrinology, Baltimore Veterans Affairs Medical Center, 10 N. Greene Street, Baltimore, MD, 21201, USA

    Tariq Siddiqui & Elias K. Spanakis

Authors
  1. Medha Satyarengga
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  2. Tariq Siddiqui
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  3. Elias K. Spanakis
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Elias K. Spanakis.

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Conflict of Interest

Medha Satyarengga and Tariq Siddiqui declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Elias K. Spanakis has received CGM supplies from DEXCOM for the conduction of inpatient clinical trials.

Human and Animal Rights and Informed Consent

The article does not contain any studies with human or animal subjects performed by any of the authors.

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The contents do not represent the views of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs or the United States Government.

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This article is part of the Topical Collection on Health Care Delivery Systems and Implementation in Diabetes

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Satyarengga, M., Siddiqui, T. & Spanakis, E.K. Designing the Glucose Telemetry for Hospital Management: From Bedside to the Nursing Station. Curr Diab Rep 18, 87 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11892-018-1067-4

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