We are proud to share the details of our recent research partnership with the University of Kentucky Department of Family and Community Medicine. The University of Kentucky aimed to study Type-2 diabetes (T2D) risk perceptions, the acceptability of an app-based pre-visit patient self-assessment tool, and the potential for use to facilitate weight and diabetes prevention discussions. Our software provided their research team with a way to screen patients and increase patient awareness of their diabetes risk.

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Understanding patient perceptions of risk, result accuracy, and the ability of assessment scores to predict health outcomes are crucial for impactful provider-led interventions. This study found that before educating the patients about their risk, only 52% of patients thought themselves at risk for diabetes. However, over 76% of patients received high-risk assessment scores. After educating patients about their risk, 40% did not perceive their results as accurate, and 48% underestimated the ability of risk scores to predict diabetes progression. Additionally, this research illustrates the patient-provider communication gaps we designed our platform around. Despite nearly 88% of patients desiring their physician to know their assessment results, only four patients reported sharing their results.

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This collaborative partnership helped us better understand the value of our pre-visit risk assessment tools while providing a better understanding of how these tools impact patient outcomes, awareness, as well as comprehension, and communication by physicians. Our most sincere thanks to Karen Roper, Huda Kutmah, Bennett Collis, Peyton Couch, James Keck, and Neelima Kale for all their hard work and collaboration on this project.

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To learn more, check out the presentation led by Karen Roper, Ph.D. at the 50th Annual meeting of the North American Primary Care Research Group: https://napcrg.org/conferences/2012/sessions/3946

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