Our friends at Diabetes Mine are launching a very cool project called the DiabetesMine Challenges Matrix. The idea is to allow the community to rate everything – from BG measuring devices to apps to nutrition and coaching programs – as to how well these offerings are helping PWDs out in the real world.
The Matrix project was created for the 2015 DiabetesMine Innovation Summit and results will be presented to industry & HCP leaders at the next DiabetesMine Innovation Summit. There are a lot of items in this survey; please feel free to rate only those where you feel you have input, and skip over the rest.
The goal is to include patients and caregivers only, i.e. people whose personal lives are affected by diabetes. We are asking pharma folk and other professionals NOT living with D to please kindly refrain from participating.
You can help improve on the DIABETESMINE CHALLENGES MATRIX by taking the survey.
I took it. In general this is very oriented towards T1. So much of the focus is on very expensive medical devices and little on the challenges faced by those of us with T2. Frankly having a brand new, even more expensive CGM with a high def screen is not relevant. Having a CGM that costs a quarter of the current model and provides the same functionality would be a breakthrough. Sadly, innovation in terms of cost isn’t really a focus except as it affects “access.”
That was my reaction too. It seemed like the wording is targeted at medical professionals rather than individual patients. E.g.,
ACCESS refers to how easy it is for patients to get their hands on something – is it very expensive, not covered by insurance, or only available in certain regions or locations? How likely is this product or service to reach the largest possible swath of eligible patients?
I mean, I can answer as to whether a given therapy is easy for ME to get access to, and whether it has a big impact on MY health. But I have no expertise on those things for “patients” in general. I’m guessing they’re actually looking for the former, but the wording seems to be asking for the latter. Did they mean to say “how easy is it for you to get access…etc”?
Further information on the Diabetes Challenges Matrix can be found in the DiabetesMine report on the 2015 Innovation Summit. This also has a pointer to a presentation on the topic.
I did the medical equipment sequence of questions, then the data sequence. They ask about various devices without any way to indicate “I have no experience with this device.” So it does kind of end up seeming like they want our sense of the whole field, not just the devices we personally use or have used. I guess that reflects the fact that they’re looking for input from a range of people, not just PWD, but it seems like that creates possible ambiguities in the questions and thus in the data they’re collecting.
I do think what they’re going for is interesting and useful–thanks for the link @Brian_BSC-- but I have some experience creating surveys and there were a lot of ambiguities here that we would have done our best to expunge. I tried to indicate some of those and clarify my responses in the comment/explain boxes they provided (speaking of which, there were also some layout problems–one of the questions I ran into had no comment box and then the next question had two, presumably one of them misplaced from the previous question–this is under Safari on OS X 10.11.3).
We probably could have used your help, Dr. BB. Maybe next time.
So… we ARE trying to get a sense of how OVERALL accessible and impactful patients think these items are. To a certain extent, perception is reality (i.e. if people don’t KNOW they can get a certain diabetes tool, then it’s basically not accessible).
Again, we’re not assuming that everyone will rate every single item. Rather the idea is for folks to weigh in and “adjust” scoring on items where they think we might be off – and of course add comments to tell us why.
No Brian, not just expensive devices – we’ve also included sections on Nutrition & Exercise & Psychological Support. The whole idea is also that the community should let us know what OTHER ITEMS should be included.
I do like that nutrition, exercise and psychological support were added, we really need innovation in those areas. Part of the challenge I had was that much of the focus was on what products companies wanted to offer rather than the things that represent important features or capabilities that we want as patients. I certainly would suggest something the Freestyle Libre as an important product that was missing but I would also say that in something like nutrition, we fundamentally miss the entire boat. Nutrition, exercise and psychological are not a traditional pharma or medical device “product” yet innovation has a very important role. It is more than just about an app. Innovation isn’t just about products, it is about new thinking. It was really hard for me to understand how to fit new items into the survey in some of these areas.
I thought of it as oriented more toward insulin users and to people in developed countries where most of this tech is available. Also the axes don’t address motivation–products or servces can be available but how well/often are people using them to improve outcomes?
You’re right – most of the tools included here target T1’s. But we’d like to include more stuff for T2 so that’s why we’re asking for your input. Please let us know what else should be included!!
Thanks it wasn’t clear to me that products had to be available, it seemed that many listed products not yet available. I do agree that makes it hard to assess the access and impact.
Oh, and regarding motivation: that’s meant to part & parcel of “IMPACT” in terms of Quality of Life. If you think most PWDs are NOT motivated to use a certain tool for whatever reason, then that item should score LOW on Impact.
