Improve Diabetes Clinic Efficiency
Managing Patients Remotely using the WaveSense JAZZ™ WIRELESS
The COVID-19 pandemic and the need to minimise face-to-face contact combined with an increase in diagnosis of people with diabetes has created a shift in the way patient care is delivered. For some HCPs, this change has been about monitoring patients remotely by running virtual clinics.
What are virtual clinics?
Virtual clinics use technology to enable remote management of a condition. These can be run in many different ways but all derive the following benefits:
Keeping Patients Safe. Continuation of care during the COVID-19 pandemic where face-to-face consultation with their diabetes HCP is stalled.
Prioritisation of Patients. Being able to assess blood glucose control of a patient remotely allows the clinician to get an individual picture of each patient. This enables prioritisation so those who are managing their diabetes well do not have to have their daily routines interrupted with the inconvenience of an unnecessary appointment.
For those that are not doing so well, the limited clinic time available can be spent on this cohort of patients ensuring the patients in most need of face-to-face consultation receive it.
Quicker Intervention. Where time between appointments could be many months, care and health may be compromised if a patient is unsuccessfully managing their diabetes. The ability to remotely assess blood glucose results means that a patient of concern can be identified, and intervention can take place quicker than before.
Improves Clinical Efficiency. Being able to prioritise patients for clinic will reduce unnecessary appointments. As well as this, email reports will always be received and presented in the same format. Such consistency allows for quicker analysis and interpretation of data. Previously, when the information was presented at a face-to-face consultation it was often in different formats and hand written, making such analysis and interpretation more difficult and time-consuming.
Patient Satisfaction. Clinic appointments can result in frustration and stress sometimes caused by the requirement to take time out of a busy work schedule, juggling childcare, poor mobility and health issues, stress of finding a parking space, the cost of parking and travel expenses. For patients who do not need to be seen this frustration and stress can be eliminated.
The use of the WaveSense JAZZ™ WIRELESS meter as a virtual clinic tool
The WaveSense JAZZ™ WIRELESS automatically syncs blood glucose results to the free-of-charge AgaMatrix Diabetes Manager app. A patient can also log and track other diabetes related data such as insulin dose, carbohydrate intake and weight.
The app enables the patient to view their colour coded blood glucose results in graphical format from a chosen time frame or in traditional logbook format.
The app also has an email function which enables the patient to send a report to their HCP at the push of a button. The report contains:
- All blood glucose readings from a chosen time frame (7, 14, 30 or 90 days)
- Average blood glucose with standard deviation
- Total number of blood glucose readings
- Total number of hypo readings
- Total number of hyper readings
- Daily average insulin units administered with standard deviation
- Insulin type breakdown (percentage)
- Average carbohydrate consumption in grams
Attached to the report is a csv file which details every single occurrence of a blood glucose reading, insulin dose and grams of carbohydrate eaten with time, date and notes, if any notes were recorded.
An increasing number of diabetes clinics are setting up a dedicated email address and using the WaveSense JAZZ™ WIRELESS email function by issuing the JAZZ™ WIRELESS to patients along with the instruction of what day and how frequent the reports are to be emailed. The clinician then blocks off time to assess and evaluate the incoming email reports which enables patients to be categorised into groups for example; “don’t need to see”, “need to see” and “need to see as a matter of urgency”. Communication of this can be done by the department’s preferred method of text, phone call, letter etc.
For more information about the WaveSense JAZZ™ WIRELESS, click here.
To arrange for an AgaMatrix representative to visit you to discuss this free of charge service, call our Customer Care Team on 0800 093 1812 or email customercare@agamatrix.co.uk
The WaveSense JAZZ™ WIRELESS is also compatible with ALLY, Glooko, GDm-Health, and my mhealth
Testimonials
Our trust utilises the WaveSense JAZZ™ in our diabetes antenatal clinics. We have found the digital features really useful for remote monitoring, especially during the pandemic. The option for patients to email their results to us, helps us to save times on phone reviews, and also means we can ensure we have an accurate understanding of their BG control. It also allows us to easily upload the results to the patient's electronic record.
We have had excellent support from Lauren both with the initial setup – contacting pharmacies to notify of the new ordering requirements and providing support materials for patients – to ongoing support with timely ordering, and problem solving. We have also used the customer support line and find this to be staffed by helpful and knowledgeable individuals.
We decided to go with the WaveSense JAZZ™ WIRELESS because a lot of patients were coming up to be seen for a 5 minute appointment and this could have been done remotely.
Phoning is often not easy because of English often being a second language, but email seems to work better. Phoning is also time consuming, because the glucose level and the time have to be read out, whereas the email shows the date and timing of the glucose.
We find it invaluable; it is the same strips that our local CCGs use and so the GPs are happy to prescribe the WaveSense JAZZ™ strips.
The fact that patients can link the results to their phone makes them feel as if they have ownership of their own results rather than using a notebook provided by us.
They are able to email us the results and we can email back suggestions without having to see them for a face to face appointment.
Since using the JAZZ™ WIRELESS meter in our gestational clinic, we have managed to overcome some of our issues with seeing the patients' results, by using the new reporting email feature.
We set up an additional email address that allow patients to upload their results. We have been able to access this outside of clinic time, to review the patients' results and make changes to their treatment, thus cutting down face to face clinic time and achieving control more quickly.
It has also allowed us to review patients' real time results and has ensured that we now receive accurate results from the patients. This has also enabled us to have accurate documentation of all blood glucose results.
We are very grateful for the support that we have been given from AgaMatrix in respect of our gestational patients We would happily recommend AgaMatrix to other gestational clinics looking for the same benefits.