Digitalization Supporting Management of Type 2 Diabetes and Other Chronic Diseases

Dear Colleagues,

Digitalization is progressing significantly at present, triggered by our experience with the pandemic but also by technical and software achievements, and attempts to address the individual needs of each patient through digital tools have become a growing field in the management of patients with chronic diseases, especially type 2 diabetes. There is significant potential for the use of digital tools in the care pathways of diabetes patients (and those with other chronic diseases) and to provide an autarkic impact to improve the outcome of our patients. There are various technologies focusing on documentation, feedback, motivation, messaging, and educational purposes, but especially supporting the behavior of patients for empowerment for better self-management of decision making. Furthermore, clinical decision support systems have been receiving growing attention in clinical care, as well as artificial-intelligence-based systems which can help to improve procedures and stratification of risk and to support professional decision making.

As is often the case in such a growing innovative environment, there is a lack of extensive evidence, and guidelines do not include information on this procedure due to a lack of studies with either positive or negative results from the clinical community, despite the speed with which this field is growing. It is for this reason that we have decided to establish this Special Issue on “Digitalization Supporting the Management of Type 2 Diabetes and Other Chronic Diseases”. Our aim is to provide a platform to communicate results of your research into digitalization, but also to offer an overview of the potential and barriers in the field, enabling to share research protocols and to gather information on the application of artificial intelligence in chronic disease management. Finally, we would like to collect insight into the development of guidelines for the introduction of digitalization into the management of chronic diseases.

There is growing evidence, both real-world and collected through studies, that digitally supported nutrition programs are more effective. Furthermore, digital health applications inform and support patients in enacting individualized nutritional behavior change. Apps that support multiple facets of patient behavior change, not only nutritional behavior but also physical activity and motivational aspects, are of particular interest. The strength of these applications is their scalability, whereas the biggest challenge is adherence and the effects of such apps on patients’ lives in the real world.

You are warmly invited if you are conducting research in this field, if you in the process of licensing digital products, or if you are involved in developing standard recommendations and guidelines in the field to publish your results and experiences in this Special Issue. We would like to make this a landmark issue for everyone working in the field of digitalization in chronic disease management, as well as the new field on the evaluation of digital tools for use in new and innovative research protocols.

I am very keen to read your manuscript and to publish together with you this Special Issue on a very innovative and important topic in medical care.

Prof. Dr. Peter E.H. Schwarz
Guest Editor

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