Continuous Glucose Monitoring: A Case Study for Commercializing Products In The Era of Patient-Driven Health Care

Continuous glucose monitoring for patients with diabetes presents an example of how an individual product has far less value than the integrated solution the technology enables. While continuous glucose monitoring offers significant value to a broad range of patients, the technology has still not fulfilled its market potential. Factors hindering more widespread adoption include inaccuracy, difficulty in using the systems, and low levels of patient adherence. But the greatest obstacle in CGM is the disconnect between CGM and treatment planning; CGM produces mounds of data that patients and even physicians don't know how to use. According to Health Care Advances, if this powerful dataset is optimized, shared, and applied, it could shift CGM from a niche product for a small number of type 1 diabetes patients into a standard of care for many metabolic diseases.