Concept of knowledge-based self-management pathways for the empowerment of diabetes patients

Abstract

Introduction: Diabetes requires a high level of disease management to be executed by the patient himself in order to succeed in treatment and for improving or at least preserving his health status. Aim: The main objective of the presented project is to design and implement a web technology based application framework. It shall provide sufficient means for selfmanagement and enable patient empowerment within the treatment process. Its underlying concept will be outlined in this work. Methods: Common techniques on requirements' engineering have been applied to derive an initial concept. It is based on a comprehensive state of the art analysis drawn from literature and web search.Results: A service-oriented architecture could be drafted that enables interoperability with existing eHealth systems on a technical and semantic level. Pilots will be deployed in Germany and Turkey. Pilot specific requirements can be address as well due to its modular architecture. Conclusion: The given concept gives a high level description of the envisaged approach. An initial prototype has been implemented. A second prototype is well on the way offering all major functionality and will be deployed within the pilot regions.

Factors associated with glycaemic control in patients with diabetes mellitus: A systematic literature review

“…Patients with higher levels of empowerment are more motivated to use a dynamic approach to acquire dietary knowledge and adopt behaviours that improve self‐management of diabetes. Hence, empowerment results in better glycaemic control (Pulvirenti et al, ; Schmuhl et al, ; Tol et al, ). Therefore, future diabetes education for patients with DM should adopt a patient‐centred approach to further promote empowerment among this population.…”

“…Theoretically, well-educated and self-empowered individuals will adopt an active role in diabetes management and achieve their individualised HbA1c goals. Patients with higher levels of empowerment are more motivated to adopt more health-conscious behaviours (Pulvirenti, McMillan, & Lawn, 2014;Schmuhl et al, 2014;Tol et al, 2013). Therefore, a higher empowerment level enhances self-management practices.…”

Lifestyle factors, self-management and patient empowerment in diabetes care

“…27 In people with DM it is important to have sufficient diabetes-related knowledge in order to increase patients' empowerment. [28][29][30] Several studies have shown that empowerment can reduce the level of HbA1c, endorse behavioural changes, improve psychological status and increase health literacy, self-care and control. 29,31,32 Mutual participation, raising awareness, providing necessary information, taking into account cultural interpretation and language differences, and open communication are critical strategies of the empowerment approach, which aims to increase a person's ability to think critically and take decisions on care autonomously.…”

Modular ICT-based patient empowerment framework for self-management of diabetes: Design perspectives and validation results

“…Archetype based-data modeling (including data schemas and corresponding rules) is an open and flexible approach. This avoids application lock-in as the knowledge models are reusable and publicly available [14]. In our case, the archetypes of blood glucose, body weight, blood pressure, medication, problem, and open issue were adopted.…”