Educational Interventions in Diabetes Mellitus Type 2 with the Use of Telemedicine: The Effects on Self Management and Quality of Life of the Patients

Introduction: Diabetes Mellitus Type 2 has been recognized as a significant cause of premature death worldwide. Self-management is one of the most important skills the patients with this particular chronic disease must obtain. The objective of improving the self-management of diabetes has led to the development and implementation of numerous telemedicine programs in order to provide care in the patient's home by health professionals. Purpose: The purpose of this systematic review is to study the effect of telemedicine technologies in the self-management of the disease. Method: This review included research studies published between 2005–2015 and from the search databases Medline, Scopus, Cinahl and Pubmed with key words "diabetes mellitus type 2", "self- management", "telehealth/ehealth", "telemedicine", "technology". Results: Overall, 24 randomized trials were reviewed and evaluated. The majority of these demonstrated that glycemic control significantly improved in the intervention groups compared with the control ones. In addition, the self management of diabetes was reinforced through the telemedicine interventions. Finally, the quality of life and patient satisfaction improved significantly, while compliance with the intervention was quite high. Conclusion: Telemedicine interventions aimed at more than one biometric parameters appeared to be much more efficient than simply self-monitoring of blood sugar regarding the self management of this chronic disease from the patients. Moreover, the strong theoretical background, the use of other technologies as well as the longer duration of the intervention has been also shown to be successful strategies. In conclusion, it is necessary to have large multicenter studies in the future in order to be able to draw reliable conclusions about the usefulness and efficiency of telemedicine applications in the self- management of chronic diseases such as diabetes mellitus type 2.