David Maahs, MD, PhD: Leveraging Telehealth to Improve Diabetes Care

In the rapidly evolving and continuously adapting world of diabetes management, one sentiment rings true regardless of device or therapy: A need to improve the delivery of care.

In the past decade, diabetes management has seen a revolution in technology as well as therapeutics. Although the diabetes community has been researching and experimenting with ways to leverage telehealth for more than a decade, a silver lining of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has been a reinvigorated belief in the potential of telehealth for improving patient outcomes as well as accessibility to care.

An example of the interest in telehealth preceding the COVID-19 pandemic is Stanford University’s Project Extension for Community Healthcare Outcomes (ECHO).1 A telehealth and teleeducation outreach model born in 2003, Project ECHO has continuously evolved and now includes knowledge exchanges related to hepatitis C, HIV, chronic pain, opioid addiction, mental illness, diabetes, and cancer. Led by a trio of Stanford University clinicians, Project ECHO Diabetes is aimed at connecting community providers with a multidisciplinary specialty team with the intent of improving care through the utilization of weekly one-hour teleECHO clinic sessions and a renewed focus on improvements in HbA1c and other diabetes care measures.

At the Advanced Technology and Treatments for Diabetes (ATTD) 2023, our editorial team sat down with David Maahs, MD, PhD, director of Pediatric Endocrinology at Stanford University and the principal investigator for Project ECHO Diabetes, to learn more about the project, its goals, and how technology can be leveraged to address the most pressing gaps in contemporary diabetes management.

References

1. What is Project Echo - Stanford Medicine Children's health. What is Project ECHO - Stanford Medicine Children's Health. https://www.stanfordchildrens.org/en/service/echo-diabetes/what-is-project-echo. Accessed February 23, 2023.
2. Maahs D. ECHO study - Delivering tele-education on diabetes to primary care physicians in underserved areas. Advanced Technologies and Treatments for Diabetes (ATTD) 2023. February 2023.