Study: Automated follow-up calls can help monitor diabetes safety events

Interactive voice recognition follow-up calls to patients with diabetes is an effective way to identify safety triggers, according to a study published in the May issue of Journal of Diabetes Science and Technology.

In the research, funded by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, type II diabetes patients received self-management support through interactive messaging using a multilingual automated voice system. The patients could trigger safety concerns by reporting pain, medication side effects or extremely high or low blood sugar.

The system identified 360 safety triggers among 155 participants, which represented 53 percent of individuals and 7.6 percent of all automated calls during the 27-week intervention, according to results presented by Courtney Lyles, research specialist at University of California San Francisco, and colleagues.

“Systems implementing health IT strategies to improve self-care and remote monitoring should consider specific program design elements to address these potential safety events,” Lyles et al wrote in their conclusion.