Present at the Congress of the Central European Diabetes Association – CEDA 2023, which took place between June 8 and 10, 2023, in Bucharest, Dr. Laura Gaita, “Victor Babeș” University of Medicine and Pharmacy from Timișoara, spoke about her passion for technology and medicine.
“It’s a topic I’m very passionate about: the use of telemedicine in diabetes. During the COVID-19 pandemic, we developed, in Timișoara, a free program for our patients, in which we were able to keep in touch with them, provide them with information related to COVID-19, about the management of diabetes and in which, practically, on a voluntary basis, we, the diabetologists from Timișoara, together with the nurses, tried to contribute to obtaining the most correct, complete and modern treatment of diabetes”, claimed Ș. Dr. Laura Gaita.
The project encountered quite a few challenges due to the context and the epidemiological situation. “It was quite an uncertain time for all of us and we had our own personal challenges. However, we have tried to make things as simple and flexible as possible for our patients. We thought of offering several solutions so that they feel that they have a friendly application at hand and we offered video consultations and the possibility of a telephone discussion through a call center through which they could access us, along with an address of email, which is still working and on which we receive questions related to diabetes and metabolic conditions. We were involved, constantly, 8-10 doctors and nurses in those moments when we divided our schedule so that we had permanence ensured”, said Dr. Laura Gaita.
Even if, now, most consultations are carried out face to face, the telemedicine project has a future, believes Dr. Laura Gaita. “This project could work extremely well and in the future, we want to keep close to our patients because telemedicine can offer us solutions, especially for people who are far away, for those who have a problem and cannot arrive on the scheduled day for consultation or to those who have certain specific questions.”
What does Dr. Laura Gaita think about the role of technology in medicine? “Technology has an increasingly important role in the management of diabetes, all the more so as we have increasingly modern and easy-to-use tools available, not only in terms of the actual treatment such as blood glucose monitoring and pumps of insulin, but also telemedicine applications through which we can support our patients, from a distance, in terms of self-care of the condition they have and, similarly, through applications that could facilitate collaboration with other specialties and, thus, interdisciplinarity. Of these, Diabeta seems to me to be an excellent tool, precisely because we manage to have quick answers to the questions we have regarding the management of diabetes – basically, we are helped in turn by technology without the need for many devices at handy.”
Diabeta is the first chatbot dedicated to diabetes doctors and not only that answers questions about the available treatments for diabetes, processing the official guidelines and protocols, as well as the RCPs of the drugs available in Romania. Diabeta is available free of charge for doctors, based on a user account that can be requested at www.diabeta.ro.
We proudly developed Diabeta using advanced AI tools and resources. The app is made available to healthcare professional communities managed by Oameni și Companii and it is supported by Novo Nordisk, Boehringer Ingelheim and Medtronic.
