Insulin Dosing Software Explained

Insulin dosing software helps healthcare providers safely and accurately prescribe the best dose of insulin for each patient.

Unlike many other medications, insulin must be titrated, which means the dose will change in response to real-time indicators like current blood glucose or based on what the patient has recently eaten.

This makes insulin dosing complicated, requiring providers to perform complex calculations to determine the best dose. Insulin dosing mistakes can be dangerous as incorrect dosages can lead to serious adverse effects such as hypoglycemia, which can cause death.

Insulin dosing software reduces many of the risks of human error by removing the need for complicated manual calculations, increasing the precision of dose recommendations by leveraging more data points and algorithmic calculations and by using alerts and workflow guides to help catch and prevent mistakes.

What are the types of insulin dosing software?

Insulin dosing software is a broad term encompassing several subcategories like intravenous (IV) insulin dosing software, subcutaneous (SubQ) insulin dosing software and outpatient insulin dosing software.

Here’s a closer look at each of these subcategories:

• IV insulin dosing software helps providers accurately titrate IV insulin to patients in a hospital, such as those in critical care or postoperative units.
• SubQ insulin dosing software helps providers titrate insulin that will be injected into hospital patients, such as those in step-down or medical units.
• Outpatient insulin dosing software allows providers to correctly titrate insulin that will then be injected by a patient or nurse at home. This software is used in primary care or outpatient endocrinology settings.

There’s also a distinction within each of these categories between software that simply digitizes paper-based insulin dosing protocols and software that uses advanced algorithms to improve patient outcomes.

What problems can insulin dosing software help solve?

Insulin dosing software helps solve many problems for hospitals, providers and patients, including reducing risk of errors, improving clinical outcomes, guiding providers in best practice and reducing cost of care.

Insulin can have serious adverse effects if it’s administered incorrectly, so insulin dosing software helps reduce errors in dosing via safety guardrails and computerized entry.

The American Diabetes Association reviews clinical studies and comes out with annual recommendations for providers. In 2020, the ADA discouraged the use of sliding-scale insulin dosing in inpatient settings. Instead, they recommend protocols that allow for adjustments that account for blood glucose fluctuations and basal-bolus dosing. Insulin dosing software can help integrate real-time BG checks into dosing decision-making and guide providers in more complex protocols like basal-bolus dosing.

Insulin dosing software imports certain data points from an EMR, which feeds into calculations and removes the need for clinicians to manually pull this data. Integrations reduce the risk of mis-keying critical information by creating a single source of truth for data.

Insulin dosing software can also help save health systems money by reducing the average length of stay for patients requiring insulin and the incidence of hypoglycemia in the hospital.

In the future, insulin dosing software may even integrate with other technology like CGMs to help patients titrate their own insulin doses at home and improve long-term diabetes care.

Is insulin dosing software safe?

The FDA regulates Software as a Medical Device. Insulin dosing software that is cleared by the FDA has been determined to be safe and effective when used as labeled. FDA regulated software is held to a high standard of safety and FDA routinely publishes safety reports on these medical devices, known as Medical Device Reporting (MDR).

About Glytec

Glytec is a leading provider of insulin dosing software. Glucommander™, our FDA-cleared solution, delivers personalized insulin dosing recommendations at the point of care while maximizing workflow efficiency for doctors and nurses.

Along with the other modules in our eGlycemic Management System^® (eGMS), Glucommander helps providers manage patients across the continuum of care. We support IV, SubQ and outpatient insulin management as well as the transitions between these stages.

Glucommander doesn’t digitize existing insulin dosing protocols; it uses advanced algorithms to improve patient outcomes and tightly control blood glucose in the hospital.

Our eGMS also includes additional tools that help unite providers in addressing their patients’ glycemic management needs:

• GlucoView: Providers can use eGMS to view a dashboard of glycemic status indicators for all patients in a unit, helping nurses track last BG test results and current infusion rates and see precisely when the next check is due.
• GlucoSurveillance: eGMS interfaces with laboratory information systems to continuously analyze patient blood glucose values of patients not using Glucommander and alert staff about at-risk patients.
• GlucoMetrics: eGMS provides insights into organizational glycemic management performance by tracking KPIs like incidence of hyperglycemia and hypoglycemia, time to target, patient utilization and more.

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