Malis­sa Lara

Doc­tors will soon have quick and easy ac­cess to di­a­betes-re­lat­ed in­for­ma­tion us­ing the lat­est tech­nol­o­gy. With­in a few sec­onds, health­care spe­cial­ists can ac­cess the ap­pli­ca­tion–Point of Care In­for­ma­tion Tech­nol­o­gy Guide (POC-IT) Di­a­betes Guide.

It pro­vides in­stant, at-a-glance ac­cess to not on­ly med­ica­tion but al­so ex­pert opin­ions. The Web and mo­bile-based med­ical ap­pli­ca­tion was re­leased by Johns Hop­kins clin­i­cal ex­perts and was done in col­lab­o­ra­tion with T&T clin­i­cians.

In­stead of comb­ing through a text­book for in­for­ma­tion, the ap­pli­ca­tion can be ac­cessed on any smart phone or di­rect­ly via the Web. It is one way of treat­ing one of T&T's most preva­lent and dam­ag­ing med­ical con­di­tions.Com­mu­ni­ty di­a­betol­o­gist Dr Claude Khan said the preva­lence of di­a­betes in T&T was be­tween 15 to 20 per cent, so there is a ma­jor epi­dem­ic. "Clin­ics are some­times over­loaded there­fore doc­tors do not al­ways have the time to re­fer to text­books dur­ing a con­sul­ta­tion," Khan said. He said the idea of the pock­et guide­lines was for doc­tors to have easy ac­cess to the lat­est up­date on di­a­betes care.

The tech­nol­o­gy is part of the T&T Health Sci­ences Ini­tia­tive.

More than 40 Johns Hop­kins spe­cial­ists and sub­spe­cial­ists from many dis­ci­plines au­thored the di­a­betes guide, along with 11 clin­i­cians from T&T. The ap­pli­ca­tion has 150 in­for­ma­tion mod­ules cov­er­ing a range of ar­eas such as clin­i­cal tests. It al­so in­cludes near­ly two dozen coun­try-spe­cif­ic mod­ules.

Some of the mod­ules in­clude:

Di­et and herbal med­i­cines;

Kid­ney dial­y­sis and epi­demi­ol­o­gy;

Re­source avail­abil­i­ty in T&T.

Khan is one T&T spe­cial­ist who has con­tributed to the guide and he has al­ready co-au­thored a sec­tion with ref­er­ence to T&T's C-DAP drugs. For now, the Web site can be ac­cessed on a tri­al ba­sis. But with­in the next few weeks doc­tors will be able to down­load in­for­ma­tion. It in­cludes sec­tions on oral med­ica­tion and in­sulin ther­a­py. Khan, whose sub-spe­cial­ty is di­a­betes, said the whole field of di­a­betes was rapid­ly pro­gress­ing. He ex­plained that over the last 20 years, the range of tablets avail­able have rapid­ly ex­pand­ed. He said this in­for­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy ini­tia­tive would keep doc­tors up­dat­ed on dif­fer­ent med­ica­tions.

T&T Health Sci­ences Ini­tia­tive (TTH­SI)

The TTH­SI be­gan as an um­brel­la pro­gramme rep­re­sent­ing a col­lab­o­ra­tion of dif­fer­ent min­istries and Johns Hop­kins Med­i­cine In­ter­na­tion­al, with the goal to ad­vance med­i­cine and health sci­ences in T&T and the wider Caribbean.

Since then the col­lab­o­ra­tion has ex­pand­ed.

The TTH­SI cur­rent­ly in­cludes four pro­grammes.

The Di­a­betes Out­reach Pro­gramme,

The Car­dio­vas­cu­lar Ser­vices Ini­tia­tive

The Mas­ters of Health Ad­min­is­tra­tion

The Caribbean Herbal Med­i­cine Re­search In­sti­tute.

Johns Hop­kins POC-IT Cen­ter

The Johns Hop­kins POC-IT Cen­ter pro­duces elec­tron­ic ev­i­dence-based clin­i­cal de­ci­sion sup­port ap­pli­ca­tions to help health­care pro­fes­sion­als raise the stan­dard of care and im­prove pa­tient safe­ty.

POC-IT Cen­ter Guide ap­pli­ca­tions are ac­ces­si­ble through both the web and mo­bile de­vices. Cur­rent­ly more than 500,000 health­care work­ers around the world have reg­is­tered to use the ap­pli­ca­tions.

You can check out the Web site at: http://www.ttdi­a­betes­guide.org