30 Minutes w/ Your Endo: Urban Legend Or A True Story?
December 4th, 2007 by Kevin 
As a follow up to our virtual endo visit via web-based video conferencing supported by HomeCheck-A1c and our ADMS for automatic blood sugar logbook collection, formatting and reporting, I thought I would post the patient’s perspective:
“It was awesome, I told Dr. Ponder I felt like we were landing on the moon!! I want to recreate the moment and place a little flag in the webcam field of vision. Dr. Ponder’s pics were dragging, a little pixel slow? We thought the internet traffic was probably heavy at that time of day? Thanks so much. I am so glad to be a part of this.” - Rhonda Lanclos, Houston - Texas
This patient-endo encounter on November 30th, 2007 was in fact very unique. On the surface, it was a video call between a person in 1 location and 2 people in another location over 200 miles away connected via the Internet. No big deal. Happens all the time.
However, in this case, the diabetes specialist was armed with highly accurate and insightful data. The patient did almost nothing to generate this data as well as nothing to share it. Nobody had to drive anywhere at any time. Neither party on either end did anything to share an accurate picture of blood sugar control. Yet, the visit happened because there was a reason to have a visit. There was data that created a need and it was available to be acted upon. That’s so different than just having a visit because of the passage of time.
Admittedly, very few people can comprehend what I’m talking about since they’ve never experience true automation when it comes to diabetes care. Give a person a taste however and they understand. It’s like the difference a day makes between describing real-time glucose alerts via GlucoMON and talking to the mother after she receives one on her phone. It’s funny but some things truly do require you to have the experience first and no amount of explanation can be the substitute.
The ramifications of this test are far reaching and must be related to the current estimate of over $132 Billion dollars every year spent on direct and indirect costs attributable to people with diabetes. I’ve been told before that if you want to get someone to buy into your idea, you must do at least one of three things: make them money, save them money or improve their quality of life. On this day I think we got all three.
Last 5 posts by Kevin
- What's in a name? - March 7th, 2010
- Steve Ponder MD, CDE - Headliner Extraordinaire - January 22nd, 2010
- Fallen Hero Now a Competitor? - January 20th, 2010
- Man Made Barriers to a Man Made Solution - January 16th, 2010
- Healthy Families of South Texas - Launch Day - December 31st, 2009
