The Luxembourg-based Hôpitaux Robert Schuman Group of Hospitals (HRS) and the United Arab Emirates’ GluCare.Health have signed an implementation agreement that introduces GluCare.Health’s novel hybrid digital therapeutics model of care for metabolic diseases into the Luxembourg public healthcare sector
October 2022 – This announcement marks GluCare.Health’s first agreement with a leading European public sector provider and is modeled around making existing primary care physicians smarter by using new continuous monitoring technologies. GluCare.Health has demonstrated that its hybrid digital + physical approach to the management of metabolic diseases significantly improves outcomes when compared against purely digital or traditional physical care. GluCare.Health and HRS will launch a pilot program to introduce this model to Luxembourg in Q4 of 2022 at HRS facilities, with the aim to roll the model out nation-wide in the future.
“GluCare.Health was founded 3 years ago with a bold vision to totally disrupt not only the way we think about how to treat metabolic disease, but fundamental expectations around the vast improvements in outcomes that are possible in society as a whole. Thanks to an array of IoT-connected devices, we are in the midst of the largest revolution and democratization of health data since the advent of imaging, and GluCare.Health has positioned itself at the nexus of data aggregation, analytics, and insight generation. We help clinicians unlock superhuman abilities to engage with and drive behavioral change in their patient populations,” said Ali Hashemi, GluCare.Health Co-Founder and Chairman.
A pioneer of technology-driven value-based care for diabetes, GluCare.Health will also partner with Santé Services S.A. as Project Manager to coordinate the project in Luxembourg. This pilot project – which incorporates continuous monitoring of blood sugar levels, dietary intake, physical activity, sleep and other digital biomarkers in real-time – aims to enhance existing diabetes management in the public sector by making care more engaging and continuous for patients, while also making the provider more accountable to the outcomes generated. The data collected is analyzed by algorithms to give a virtual care team actionable insights to share with patients. It will also enhance the regular engagement by HRS physicians managing patients physically.
“We are very excited to partner with HRS and Sante Services to mark our first international expansion, and believe the Luxembourg healthcare system is ready for the adoption of new models of accountable care. Our partnership sets us on the path for mass adoption of digital therapeutic tools for the benefit of the public sector, and makes Luxembourg one of the first countries to truly embrace the use of digital biomarkers,” comments Dr. Ihsan Almarzooqi, Co-Founder and Managing Director of GluCare.Health.
The pilot project follows a large representative sample of selected diabetic patients, on a volunteer basis. It is expected that future cohorts will be expanded to include pre-diabetics or healthy patients. The GluCare.Health digital therapeutic platform will be hosted in a GDPR-compliant IT environment in Luxembourg and will collect participants’ data from multiple inputs, including wearable devices and electronic medical records. One of the primary goals of the pilot is to measure sustainable behavioral change metrics, including changes to sleep, physical activity, and dietary habits, combined with real-time blood glucose levels.
In recent years, CGM (Continuous Glucose Monitoring) systems have emerged as an integral part of diabetes care. Continuous glucose monitoring can lead to significantly better outcomes than traditional, sporadic self-monitoring of blood glucose (SMBG). Additional objectives of this pilot project are to standardize and improve the use of CGM for
the care of Type I diabetic patients, to prove the efficacy of this program in the treatment of Type II diabetes, and also to manage more pre-diabetic patients in order to avoid their conversion to diabetes. CGM data is also used in conjunction with the monitoring of digital bio-markers collected from a range of wearables and devices to draw out correlative insights previously hidden from patients and providers alike.
