Messaging and Digital Health for Diabetes (Formative work): SuMMiT-D
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Supporting people with type 2 diabetes in effective use of their medicine through a system comprising mobile health technology integrated with clinical care: trial development work.
IRAS ID
179916
Contact name
Andrew Farmer
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of Oxford
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 3 months, 29 days
Research summary
Type 2 diabetes is a lifelong condition that causes a person's blood sugars to become too high. Medicines to lower blood glucose, blood pressure and cholesterol, when taken as intended, can stop complications developing. Concerns about starting medicines and difficulties in taking them regularly are common.
Advice, information and prompts for a wide range of medicine-related concerns and problems can be offered by sending brief messages to mobile communication devices (e.g. text-messages) in addition to usual care. This can be done for large numbers of people at low cost. Sending brief messages can improve health, but more research is needed so they work better and are relevant to different groups of people.
The studies submitted here for an ethical opinion are part of an initial (formative) programme of work (requiring formal research designs) to inform the design and content of a digital health system to support people with type 2 diabetes. Alongside other development work (not requiring an NHS ethical opinion) we will find out which types of messages are most useful for people starting and taking a diabetes medicine. We will examine whether messages can be tailored to the individual using routinely available NHS data. We will explore if it is valuable for patients to decide which types of messages they want to receive and respond to. We will also explore how a digital intervention such as this can be presented to people in day-to-day care. We will make sure messages are acceptable and use secure links and encrypt data.
This work will provide us with the information to design and conduct a feasibility trial, and subsequently a large clinical trial to evaluate the extent of benefit for patients of this intervention.REC name
North West - Greater Manchester West Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
17/NW/0224
Date of REC Opinion
12 Apr 2017
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion