Lessons learned from a survey with AADE participants

 

Earlier this summer, in collaboration with the AADE, we held a special survey with attendees registered to attend the 2019 American Association of Diabetes Educators Conference. One of the questions asked in the survey involved the source of access to innovation information in Diabetes care.  

 

As diabetes becomes an increasing medical and financial burden, the development of innovative improvement strategies that address the complexities and demands of managing chronic health conditions is of growing importance.

 

There’s no lack of innovation and creativity surrounding many of the newest products and services available for diabetes care and management; from home glucose monitoring systems and IT-supported diabetes management services to a diabetes vaccine that is ever closer to becoming a reality. Breakthroughs in diabetes care are eliminating much of the pain  of people living with the disease, and reducing the risk of life-threatening complications, so access to this information is critical. However, with technology evolving at such a rapid pace – as an endocrinologist, diabetes educator or nurse practitioner –  just how do you keep up?  How do you stay informed on the most cutting edge trends in diabetes care management? 

 

That’s one of the main questions we placed in front of the 401 AADE attendees who participated in our survey.

More than half of the people surveyed cited professional conferences as their primary source of diabetes innovation news.  Now, let’s be honest: as wonderful as it is to attend conferences and take advantage of all of the networking opportunities they have to offer, conferences are (usually) quite expensive. It’s not just the conference ticket you need to worry about;  add up the cost of travel, accommodations and food, plus the amount of time spent away from your patients and clinic – you need to wonder about the ROI – is it really worth it?

 

Meanwhile, the not-so-new kid on the block, namely the internet, has been steadily rising as the next preferable source of diabetes innovation taking 24% of the votes. That’s no surprise given that internet users are growing at a rate of more than 11 new users per second, which results in an impressive total of one million new users each day   On average, the world’s internet users spend 6 hours and 42 minutes online each day. [1]  Doing what? Well, among the 10 most common uses for the internet you can find the “search for information” and “education. [2]

Realizing  that this trend is not going to go away any time soon, we recently embarked on a new initiative, the Advisor Academy – a global online conference platform featuring the latest innovations, research, products and expertise in diabetes care technology – brought to you by the world leaders in the field of diabetes research.

 

Each month the Advisor Academy showcases a live webinar which highlights the use of technology in diabetes care management; state-of-the-art lectures, case studies, product reviews, oral presentations and more – available live or for offline viewing to watch at your leisure. Why have we decided to pursue webinars? hey are easy to engage with and enable us to interact with our audience.  According to some statistics, the average audience viewing time for a webinar is 57 minutes; an astonishing number when you consider how little time the average professional will engage with any other online content.[3]

 

We launched the Advisor Academy,  on July 31st, with a lecture by Dr. Revital Nimri of Schneider Children’s Medical Center of Israel about the Emerging Digital World in Diabetes Care – Decision Support Systems.

The following webinar waslaunched at the end of August and featured Prof. Tadej Battelino,  Head of Department of Pediatric and Adolescent Endocrinology at UMC Ljubljana, Slovenia, who introduced the use of technology to reach Time in Range targets.

 

Coming next, on September 26th, is a fascinating lecture by Dr. Thomas Dane from the Department of Diabetes, Endocrinology, and Clinical Research, Children’s and Youth Hospital Auf der Bult, Hannover Medical School, Hannover, Germany who will discuss SLGT-Inhibitors and technology. If you wish to sign up for this webinar, screen past webinars or learn more about our upcoming schedule, please visit the Advisor Academy.

 

[1] https://wearesocial.com/blog/2019/01/digital-2019-global-internet-use-accelerates

[2] https://www.ultimatestealth.com/top-10-internet-uses/

[3] https://blog.gotomeeting.com/introducing-the-big-book-of-webinar-stats-we-analyzed-250000-webinars-to-help-you-make-yours-better/