Patients lack user-friendly and affordable biobehavioural monitoring tools to track behavioural, physiological, and environmental factors critical to diabetes management.
Lifestyle factors (e.g., sleep quality, physical activity, diet patterns, and stress levels) are powerful determinants in both diabetes prevention and management, as well as associated psychological distress. Monitoring and tracking these lifestyle factors along with physiological parameters such as blood pressure and glucose can help prevent and manage diabetes. Biobehavioural monitoring involves the use of sensor-based technologies to collect real-time physiological data like blood pressure, heart rate variability, physical activity, sleep, and stress. Such monitoring could complete picture of metabolic health, enabling data-driven interventions for both prevention and management. Yet, behavioural parameters are not routinely measured in clinical practice and remain out of reach for most affected individuals.
All individuals with and at risk of diabetes are stakeholders. These individuals may benefit from tailored lifestyle advice and treatment strategies that account for real-time changes in their metabolic health. However, poor adoption, costs, and inadequate integration of biobehavioural data with clinical records prevents their use in practice.
Some wearable technologies track biobehavioural parameters of interest. However, the adoption of such technologies is limited in resource-limited settings, where advanced monitoring devices remain financially out of reach and may require advanced digital literacy. Current adoption rates are below 3% in rural areas compared to 12% in urban centres.
Key barriers to developing effective low-cost biobehavioural monitoring solutions include cost of medical grade sensors, as well as accuracy and algorithm validation across diverse geographies, seasons, and lifestyles.
360o Diabetes Tracking: A low-cost wearable tailored for diabetes that monitors multi-dimensional behaviours and risk factors to support prevention and management.
Additional Considerations:
Technological solutions that address the need for affordable biobehavioural monitoring are most likely to succeed if they can balance comprehensive data collection with long battery life on single charge, ease of maintenance, data interpretability, and aesthetics.
Culturally appropriate and actionable insights without requiring constant healthcare provider interpretation in low-risk situations can enable long-term, positive health behaviours.
Tools that are patient-driven without requiring constant healthcare provider interpretation in low-risk situations can enable long-term, positive health behaviours.
