Glytec

Glucommander Named 2021 Medical Design Excellence Awards Finalist

Robby Booth discusses Glytec’s 15-year anniversary, Glucommander’s recognition for outstanding MedTech design and engineering, and recent product innovations that continue to revolutionize glycemic management.

Dr. Bruce Bode and I founded Glytec on March 28, 2006, with a mission to improve the lives of hospitalized patients through better insulin management. In January 2005, a task force of representatives from national medical organizations, including the American Diabetes Association, held a “Call to Action” conference, where a consensus was reached - intensive management of hyperglycemia in the hospital improves clinical outcomes. A few months later, Glucommander became the first insulin titration decision support software to receive FDA clearance as a Class II Medical Device. 

For 15 years, Glytec has remained steadfast in its commitment to delivering pioneering insulin and glycemic management solutions. We are incredibly honored to announce Glucommander has been named a finalist for the 2021 Medical Design Excellence Awards (MDEA) in the Digital Health Products and Mobile Medical Apps category. 

The MDEA is the premier awards program for the MedTech industry. Since its inception in 1998, the mission of the MDEAs has been to recognize significant achievements in medical product design and engineering that improve the quality of healthcare delivery and accessibility. The category winners, best-in-show and readers’ choice award recipients will be announced virtually on May 13 at the Medtech Design Summit.

As an organization, we’re incredibly humbled by MDEA for recognizing our efforts in improving the quality of healthcare for patients across the country. The nomination is a testament to our entire team's hard work, effort and determination over the years. 

For those of you unaware of our backstory, we developed Glucommander because of the urgent need for better solutions to manage glucose in the hospital. One of the greatest challenges we saw hospitals having was that most efforts to lower high glucose levels using insulin often had an unintended side effect of causing glucose to drop too low (hypoglycemia), which can cause coma, seizures, brain damage, and death.

Glucommander is a FDA-cleared Software as a Medical Device (SaMD) and has been through the FDA 510(k) review process four times, each time for significant enhancements, providing data and evidence to demonstrate the product is safe and effective in the management of hyperglycemia.

Today’s product is the culmination of years of innovation, which have led to significant improvements in clinical safety and efficacy, EMR integration and interoperability. With Glucommander seamlessly integrated into the EMR, in one click, clinicians can launch a patient’s Glucommander profile, view a patient’s glycemic profile, and confirm insulin dose recommendations that simultaneously populate in the patient’s medical chart. Glucommander is also integrated in health system laboratories to analyze various biomarkers and identify patients in need of insulin who were not being actively treated. 

Our newest version of Glucommander, released on March 30, features Medical Administration Record (MAR) and order set integrations that eliminate the need for transcription by sending insulin data from the MAR into Glucommander and the EHR. The update also included medication dose confirmation, subcutaneous blood glucose recovery and Meter Max override.

Through Glucommander, we provide more than 300 hospitals and health systems nationwide with a consistent, repeatable approach to managing glucose that improves the quality and cost of care. We continue to drive momentum in hospitals across the country as the necessity of this type of solution becomes increasingly evident. 

Nearly one-third of patients admitted to acute care hospitals in the U.S. – regardless of diabetes diagnosis – experience hyperglycemia or hypoglycemia and need insulin support. Yet, nearly 90% of the more than 6,000 U.S. hospitals employ an outdated form of insulin therapy inconsistent with recommendations by the American Diabetes Association, American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists, and other authoritative sources. Not only does this compromise clinical outcomes and endanger patient safety, but it can also negatively impact workflow efficiencies, increase length of stay and compound cost of care.

It’s clear that adequate glycemic management is an unmet need that is pervasive among health systems across the country. Unmet needs are abundant in healthcare and identifying them and applying modern solutions can be difficult. That’s why I am humbled to also partner with Medical Design Excellence to participate in the “Identifying Unmet Needs in Healthcare” panel discussion at the Medtech Design Summit 2021 on May 13. 

I look forward to joining some of the best and brightest in the Medtech industry to explain how Glytec identified the need for computerized insulin support software, the process of designing and deploying Glucommander, and how we continue to innovate and revolutionize the field of glycemic management.

For more information on Glucommander, our eGlycemic Management System (eGMS) or to schedule a live demo, visit our solutions page: https://glytecsystems.com/solutions-overview/solutions-eglycemic-management-system/ 

 

ECO #01111-A

Subscribe to our blog!