Digital innovation in diabetes care

Diabetes is a set of chronic metabolic disease, in which the body can either not produce enough insulin or not process body insulin correctly, resulting in raised levels of blood glucose. Diabetes not only has high prevalence – currently affecting one out of eleven adults worldwide – but is also a very serious condition: In 2015, diabetes caused more adult deaths globally than HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria combined according, to the International Diabetes Federation. Current trends, such as the obesity pandemic, increasing life expectancy, and urbanization lead to a growing prevalence of the disease and the need for innovation in diabetes care. Technological development is opening up remotely accessible treatment options through telemedicine, the Internet of Things can potentially increase patient´s quality of life, and preventive care is becoming more feasible through, e. g. machine learning. However, growing processing power, combined with the increasing collection of health-related data, also leads to legal challenges in handling patient data. Furthermore, the growing number of diabetes patients worldwide is putting economic pressure on healthcare systems. This report consists of three parts: First, the authors analyze trends in the field of diabetic care. From these findings, four scenarios are derived that vividly depict possible features. In the final part, five business ideas are elaborated and validated in each of the four scenarios. The concepts ideated range from an online prevention program for teens, a platform that makes shopping under dietary restrictions easy, a mentoring program to support newly diagnosed diabetics, an artificial pancreas matched with a platform to holistically manage disease-related data, to a smart device that makes manual interference in diabetes treatment a thing of the past.