Earlier this year, DiabetesWise Pro launched a free, unbranded, and unbiased prescription tool, which allows healthcare professionals to access and develop customized care plans tailored for people with diabetes and their unique circumstances. The tool helps healthcare providers identify the best available diabetes devices (like continuous glucose monitors [CGMs] and insulin pumps) on the market and assists in streamlining the prescription process.
According to the Diabetes Atlas, provided by the International Diabetes Federation (IDF), 537 million adults, ages 20 to 79, live with diabetes worldwide today. That number is predicted to climb to 643 million by 2030 and 783 million by 2045. As the number of diabetes cases worldwide continues to rise, it’s more important than ever for providers to have access to necessary tools and resources like this.
I sat down with Korey Hood, Ph.D., founder of DiabetesWise, who is also a person living with type 1 diabetes, to discuss the capabilities of DiabetesWise Pro. Hood explains the organization’s new prescription tool and how it helps people with diabetes and their providers develop customized care plans.
JULIA: For those unfamiliar with DiabetesWise, can you explain the organization’s function and mission within the diabetes space?
KOREY: We started DiabetesWise in 2019 as a resource for people with diabetes where individuals could go to understand the landscape of available devices for them. And also, do a little work to match what devices work best for them based on their preferences, priorities, and lifestyle. As we were doing that work, we realized that another reason why people with diabetes can’t access devices is that it’s hard to get providers to prescribe them.
Either through a lack of knowledge of what’s available, a lack of time, or they don’t know what might fit a person, DiabetesWise Pro was launched within the past year. We also just launched a prescription tool that aims to simplify the prescription process for healthcare professionals caring for people with diabetes.
JULIA: I imagine that tools like this help foster better relationships between people with diabetes and their healthcare providers. Can you speak to that?
KOREY: That’s what we’re hoping to do with both platforms—we hope it starts a conversation with your healthcare professional about what might be a good fit for you. On the healthcare professional side, it allows them to input information on the device, the insurance plan, and what state they’re in. Then it will tell them about authorization and give them a guide. So people with diabetes can also use that, but it’s intended for healthcare professionals. It can start the process of them working together.
I think many people [with diabetes] either have questions for their providers that sometimes they can’t answer, or people with diabetes aren’t sure what language to use [to ask for devices]. So, we also have guidelines for people with diabetes on asking for a pump or CGM to get the right fit.
JULIA: Do people with diabetes and their healthcare providers have to reassess this annually based on insurance changes?
KOREY: We’ve partnered with Policy Reporter, which has contracts with several different payers. We pull in their data on the DiabetesWise Pro website. So if a person changes their plan, because we update that every few months, people can refresh what’s available. All of that information is populated on the website. The person has to go back in and recheck. We keep it up to date with insurance and new devices.
JULIA: So there are no restrictions on the searchability of different devices or insurance plans?
KOREY: We just have the search [functionality] for the devices that deliver insulin or monitor glucose. We keep it up to date on that front. We don’t have insulin searchability. However, people can search for coverage of Affrezza. We continue to update the tool as new devices are FDA-approved.
JULIA: Got it! Will the tool tell you whether a device is covered under your pharmacy or durable medical equipment (DME) benefit if you have insurance?
KOREY: Yes. When we talk to people with diabetes and stakeholders, like their providers, they ask two main questions. First, “Is prior authorization required?” Then, “Is it covered through DME or a pharmacy benefit?” So, the output of this tool tells you these things as the first pieces of information you get.
On that point, we’ve seen a lot of shifts from DME to pharmacy benefits over the last year particularly. Going forward, I think that will be a more popular route as devices get released, but we’ll see. We’re keeping an eye on that trend.
JULIA: Knowing that difference can save time and money for people with diabetes! I know it would’ve benefited me personally in this way if I had known about this tool years ago.
KOREY: It can save time, money, and hassle. It’s hard to be an advocate for yourself all the time. Finding out and trying to get diabetes devices takes a lot. Many people will give up when they experience denials or not knowing who to ask. This problem was another reason we wanted to build this tool.
JULIA: This could prevent spending hours on the phone with insurance to get answers. That should help shoulder some of the burnout around this issue.
KOREY: It’s free, too. Everything on our platforms is free. We don’t want any barriers to people accessing these things. We’re supported through a grant from the Helmsley Charitable Trust. We don’t have support or connections with device manufacturers, which allows us to stay neutral. That’s our plan—always to have it free. Their vision and our vision is we need people to have access to this, and they shouldn’t have to pay for it.
JULIA: What feedback have you received about these tools from people with diabetes and their providers?
KOREY: We’ve received a lot of positive feedback, especially around having a one-stop shop to get information instead of finding bits of information in different places. We’ve heard people want a better estimate of how much they’ll have to pay out of pocket. That’s a tricky thing to find. We do some of that on the website, but one of our subsequent pushes will have more information about what you can expect to pay out of pocket.
Trying to get a reasonable estimate can be tricky because there are thousands of insurance plans, but overall, we’ve had positive feedback about the tool. People find it easy to use, and they want more of it. We’re going to keep making it even better.
JULIA: What do you hope DiabetesWise will achieve in the next 5 to 10 years for people with diabetes?
KOREY: At the forefront is trying to generate more access for people with diabetes to devices and giving them more choices. If we can make a mark in promoting access and choice for diabetes devices, then we’ll be really happy.
We’re hoping to have an impact on people with diabetes, healthcare professionals, and the system—which is harder to crack—but hopefully, we can make a dent there.
We want to foster more engagement around devices and the process for getting on them for people with diabetes and healthcare professionals. It’s not always a positive experience. We want to figure out ways to have more positive stories, more information, and maybe even sessions that can help people navigate that. We want to build more community around this specific experience.