Designing the Glucose Telemetry for Hospital Management: From Bedside to the Nursing Station.

Abstract

Hospitalized patients with diabetes are monitored with point-of-care glucose testing. Continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) devices represent an alternative way to monitor glucose values; however, the in-hospital CGM use is still considered experimental. Most inpatient studies used "blinded" CGM properties and only few used the real-time/unblinded CGM features. One major limitation of the CGM devices is that they need to be placed at the patients' bedside, limiting any therapeutic interventions. In this article, we review the real-time/unblinded CGM use and share our thoughts about the development of future inpatient CGM systems. We recently reported that glucose values can be wirelessly transmitted to the nursing station, providing remote continuous glucose monitoring. Future inpatient CGM devices may be utilized for patients at risk for hypoglycemia similarly to the way that we use cardiac telemetry to monitor hospitalized patients who are at increased risk for cardiac arrhythmias.