What is the ADA Diabetes Technology Interest Group?
In this podcast, Viral Shah MD, Professor of Medicine in the Division of Endocrinology and Metabolism at the Indiana University School of Medicine and Chair of the American Diabetes Association (ADA) Diabetes Technology Interest Group discusses new advancements in the field of diabetes technology, what excites him about diabetes technology when looking ahead to 2025 and beyond, the goals and objectives of the ADA Diabetes Technology Interest Group, and more.
Additional Resources: https://professional.diabetes.org/membership/interest-groups
For more diabetes technology content, visit the Excellence Forum.
Anthony Calabro, MA: Hello, everyone, and welcome to another installment of Podcast360, your go-to resource for medical education and clinical updates. I'm your moderator, Anthony Calabro with Consultant360, a multidisciplinary medical information network.
Contained within the American Diabetes Association are a total of 16 interest groups composed of ADA members with expertise or interest in diabetes specialties such as behavioral medicine and psychology, eye health, foot care, and more. One of those 16 interest groups focuses on diabetes technology.
Consultant360 spoke with Viral Shah MD, Professor of Medicine in the Division of Endocrinology and Metabolism at Indiana University School of Medicine. Dr Shah is also the chair of the ADA Diabetes Technology Interest Group. We spoke with Dr. Shah to discuss new advancements in the field of diabetes technology, what excites him about diabetes technology when looking ahead, and more.
But first, I wanted to begin with a simple question for Dr Shah: What is the ADA diabetes technology interest group?
Viral Shah, MD: The American Diabetes Association has done really good job in last couple of years in developing these different interest groups for their members.
What this means is that every one of us, at least those who are working in diabetes field, have their own either clinical interest or research interest about either technology or the diabetes in a primary care practice or the women in diabetes care, right? So, with those kind of a different area differences, we also have advisors and some senior people in that group. So, this is a group of anywhere between six to eight individuals. And our tasks are many, but overall, number one is to identify the contents that audience would love to hear at American Diabetes Association annual meeting.
So we sent out survey. We sent out some kind of feedback to our audience, including interest group membership. And so we will reach out to these people, and using a small survey, ask about their opinions or what kinds of a topics that they want to hear. And we give our feedback to the ADA scientific planning committee. And it's up to them to decide on certain topics, but we provide that kind of a feedback.
We also create some webinars for not just our interest group, but for other interest groups and overall, the audience of the ADA membership, those webinars would be helpful to clinicians on a lot of different things. Like, for example, we have done a couple of webinars on transition clinics, where the pediatric patients are going to be transitioning to the adult clinic and what that transition care should look like, how some clinics are doing it successfully. So we had a lot of practical topics that we have done webinar around. So that's something we do within our interest group for all ADA members. And some of them are also available outside the ADA members, too. We also try to coordinate with the ADA education team.
So if, for example, they have a funding, which is called as a hands-on webinar series, which is specifically designed for diabetes technologies for primary care physicians. So we also try to help the ADA Education Unit on developing some of those educational modules. So a lot of different roles that the group provides, including feedback to a different part of the ADA. And we are proud to do a lot of different things for our members.
Anthony Calabro: What are the knowledge gaps in diabetes technology that your group works to fill? And how do you identify those gaps?
Dr Shah: Yeah, sure. And the gaps can be identified by the ADA as well as by us, right? So it's kind of like we work together. And so we reach out to the members and try to ask them what they want. And ADA has their own way of probably trying to think about some of the gaps, right? And then we kind of talk to each other.
And for example, one of the gaps that we know in real life is that the devices that includes the CGM and insulin pumps, the uptake of those devices for people with type 1 diabetes is much higher in endocrine clinics, but not in a primary care practices, right? And we understand that the primary care practices are busy, and they do not have probably all the supports that is needed, right? So I think the last year or so, ADA as well as our interest group within the ADA, both have done a lot more work in that space just to, you know, increase the awareness about the devices, to provide some education around increasing the clinical efficiencies and flows, to integrate those devices, how to interpret that, how to make meaningful changes, those kind of a things, so that we can try to really promote the use of CGM in a primary care practice and improve outcomes. Ultimately, it has to do with outcomes.
Anthony Calabro: Does your interest group make recommendations about specific diabetes devices?
Dr Shah: Yeah, the interest group does not make any recommendation. So the recommendations overall at the ADA, think about that way, it comes in two different sites. One, we call it a standard of care, which is updated every year. The standard of care writing committee and the group is completely different group.
Now, in the past, we in the diabetes technology interest group did provide feedback about the standard of care. So we have reviewed that portion and provided our feedback. But we are not exactly the same because that's a different committee doing that part.
Also, the ADA has their own guidance or guideline development committee, right, that provides, that kind of like really works with different societies and organizations. Think about the EASD (The European Association for the Study of Diabetes) in Europe, right? Or another endocrine organization here in the US, and they sometimes develop a joint consensus or joint guidance, and those kinds of things are done by another committee. So, we don't do any recommendation.
Our main objective is to provide the knowledge and the education that may be helpful to clinicians on understanding different devices, how they work, how to personalize those things for patients with type 1 or type 2 diabetes, how to use them efficiently, how to improve that clinic outcome. And some of the interesting cases that we have done sometimes in a webinar is, okay, if you see something like that, what it means and what you can do next.
Anthony Calabro: What excites your interest group as we look ahead to 2025?
Dr Shah: We are living in exciting times of diabetes technology. And our group is one of the larger groups among all the different interest groups and that make sense. Most of our webinars, our educational programs are highly attended, and we are in much better shape than any other interest group at the ADA.
So, it tells you overall the interest, you know, from the clinicians, from the mid-levels, from, you know, the pharmacist and all other supporting staffs in diabetes care on utilization of technologies, understanding those technologies to improve the outcome. So the technology is the way moving forward for diabetes management. And I think that's what we are trying to do is to provide education as much as possible.
Anthony Calabro: What are your expectations for the interest group for 2025 and beyond?
Dr Shah: Yeah, obviously it feels like it's a growing group. It's something that you mentioned that’s new in a diabetes field. We want to make sure that they are connected. They are connected to the smartest people on the earth who are doing some fantastic and superb research, right? And if that helps them to develop their own research career or clinical career, we are fulfilling our objective. So that's number one that we are emphasizing a lot now.
You might have seen that even this year, the ANA Scientific Committee program, a lot of early career faculties were invited on a podium to talk, right? So that's our purpose—to give them visibility. We give them a space to grow.
Number two is that now we are thinking more in terms of developing those educational contents, not by us, but in collaboration with different interest groups. And one of the examples is that there is an exercise physiology group and how wonderful it is to collaborate with them and say that, is there any way we can develop a webinar or education on how to use these different tools for athletes? How about for people who do a lot of different types of exercises? There are no really good guidance and standards around that part. So we have done that. We collaborate outside the box, think about the problem, and how we can solve that problem together.
And the best example of this is that this has taken about 2.5 years for everybody at our interest group and pregnancy interest group. So we had a couple of conversations, and out of that conversations, we came to the conclusion that a lot of research around pregnancy and diabetes are coming from UK. Helen Murphy's group and their research team, right? Why we don't have that? There are various reasons for that, right? We have done successfully about type 1 diabetes understanding the diabetes care model in the US by doing a T1D exchange program, right? That's a T1D exchange clinical registry that was developed way back in 2013. Can we develop that for pregnancy? Can we develop this large registry of a pregnancy and diabetes? So trust me, in about a year and half from now, there will be a lot of data that will come from US, right? And this is just a simple networking discussion that brought that entire research that is going to help a lot of us to improve the care during pregnancy. So I think we constantly think about a lot of different things on research, clinical care, education.
Anthony Calabro: Is that process something that can be replicated?
Dr Shah: Yeah, we haven't planned that kind of another intense discussion at this moment and sometimes I call this way that the most of the science and the scientific innovations are suddenly beating away, that it just kind of sparks in a moment and then it happens, right? And so we don't have anything on like a literally planned discussion, but we do talk to a lot of different interest group on a regular basis for, as I mentioned, that collaborating for webinar or some kind of an educational program. So we are always welcome to hear different thoughts, different ideas, a different way of collaborating with people. And our group is very dynamic. They do a lot. So I am a proud to represent that group that has a lot of energy.
Anthony Calabro: What diabetes technology advancements are you most intrigued about as we move toward 2025 and beyond?
Dr Shah: Yeah, I'm a predominantly researcher, so I think the level of excitements are different, right? There are a lot of things coming up, right? And I may not be able to say a lot of different things on this platform, but yes, I think a lot of us were interested in technology is going to be busy. I think overall theme is how we can make diabetes management easier. I think it's an interesting because people with diabetes would have a lot of different choices to select from, right? And I think the overall concept of interoperability is now coming to reality, where people can decide any pump, any CGM, any type of algorithm that fits and suits to them, right? So Twist is coming. Ambecta is partnering with Tidepool. They are developing their type 2 specific insulin pump and closed-loops system in future, right? It's all in public domain. So a lot of things. The existing pump companies, they are in a competition too, right? And so, I think having more of this new tools makes the existing people to now even move faster. Otherwise, they will be behind in this space.
So I'm sure that the Medtronic has a pretty strong pipeline on their own closed-loop system with sensors and CGM. Omnipod is working on their second version, so a lot of things is happening in this space particularly towards automation. I think overall, the market is excited about AI and diabetes technology is not an exception to that with AI supports and AI-based solutions will make diabetes care easier.