Diabetes: Innovative technology for long-term health conditions

August 18, 2020

Here, we discover why Gendius’ remote management technology, Intellin®, is poised to transform the way that we manage long-term health conditions including diabetes

Innovations in remote management technology have the potential to transform the way that healthcare systems across the world manage long-term conditions.

Start-ups like Gendius, with its remote management platform for diabetes, are showing there is a huge demand for technology that can help people to manage their conditions more effectively.

Healthcare systems across the world have not only been struggling to contain the COVID-19 outbreak, but also with how to manage the millions of patients worldwide who are living with long-term chronic health conditions, such as diabetes. The COVID-19 outbreak has exposed serious flaws in the current management strategies for these vulnerable patients, especially as in-person appointments and reviews have been slashed.

Smart diabetes management platform, Intellin®

Start-ups developing remote management technology have seen increased interest from users, investors, and healthcare systems alike. British digital health start-up Gendius launched its smart diabetes management platform, Intellin®, across the world in January 2020 and now has more than 300,000 downloads and over 65,000 monthly active users.

Gendius has also seen fantastic support from investors on its recently completed crowdfunding campaign, which raised over £400,000, exceeding the original target by over 800%. The crowdfunding campaign was the start of a £5.8 million investment round for Gendius, which will further accelerate the growth of the Intellin® platform, as well as funding the development of platforms to support both young adults with diabetes and those with gestational diabetes.

The Intellin® remote management platform is designed to help people with diabetes to actively track and monitor their condition. It consists of an app for the person with diabetes, and a secure dashboard for the healthcare team, which talk with each other to enable remote management and support. Crucially, it also uses the individual’s clinical history to highlight their risk of developing diabetes-related complications, such as cardiovascular disease, kidney disease, amputation, and blindness.

Gendius CEO, Rory Cameron, explains why Gendius’ approach is different, “There are a lot of other diabetes apps out there, but they all tend to focus on tracking symptoms like blood glucose and blood pressure, but without highlighting what those things mean for someone’s disease progression and their risk of developing complications. So, the key difference between Intellin® and other diabetes apps is that Intellin® can highlight your risk profile, and act as a diabetes ‘sat-nav’ to help you to plan for the future.”

Rory continues, “I think that we are already seeing mobile health apps driving structural changes to healthcare systems. In the UK, we have seen a huge reduction to the usual support services available for people with diabetes during the COVID-19 outbreak. Without this in-person support, remote management apps are becoming vital tools for patients.”

The inspiration behind the Intellin® platform is Gendius’ Co-Founder, Chris Genders, who was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes when he turned 50. Although Chris had spent many years working in the pharmaceutical industry, he wasn’t prepared for the overwhelming experience of managing the condition himself. He says, “My diabetes diagnosis changed my whole life in the space of 30 minutes. It was a huge change of lifestyle for me, as I had previously thought of myself as healthy, and I wasn’t prepared for how difficult it would be to manage. My NHS doctors and nurses were fantastic, but they are under a huge amount of time pressure, and they simply didn’t have the bandwidth to give me ongoing support.”

Chris continues, “The idea for Intellin® had been percolating in my mind for some time since my diabetes diagnosis. I thought that if I was finding managing my condition so difficult, then other people must be struggling as well. The key difference when you are using Intellin® is that it tells you about your risk profile, and provides clinically validated advice based on that risk. As remote management becomes a necessity for the millions of people living with diabetes, I think we are only going to see Intellin’s growth accelerate.”

Significant interest from the wider healthcare industry

Beyond the exceptional growth of the Intellin® platform, Gendius has also seen significant interest in remote management from the wider healthcare industry. Gendius has recently announced a strategic partnership with AstraZeneca in the Gulf region, which will see healthcare professionals across the Gulf using the Intellin® platform to optimise their patients’ diabetes management. Gendius is also in discussions with a number of NHS Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) about integrating Intellin® into their existing diabetes management schemes.

Dr Tom Micklewright, GP, who reviewed Intellin® as one of the top-scoring diabetes apps on the ORCHA App Library, comments on the increasing demand for technology solutions like Intellin®, “Intellin® is the FitBit of diabetes apps. It is an incredibly comprehensive tracking tool for monitoring a huge range of different variables that matter to diabetics.

“The most valuable bit is you can go to the priorities section of the app. What the priorities section does, is draw all of the information from the tracking you have done together to highlight your highest risk areas as a diabetic. It flags the high-risk areas, explains that risk, and then offers tailored advice to the patient. […] There is also a clinicians’ dashboard, which allows doctors to see all of their diabetic patients at once, and to deep dive into the individual patient’s results in order to see what their diabetic management is like. The overview it gives you is far clearer than anything we have got at the moment in general practice.”

The future of remote management technology

With the number of people with diabetes projected to grow to 642 million globally by 2040 (1) effective management of diabetes is only going to become more vital. The support for Gendius from across the spectrum suggests that now may be the moment that remote management technology comes of age, and really begins to transform the way the management of long-term conditions.

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