Intelligent and Educational System for Gestational Diabetes Management

Gestational diabetes, diabetes diagnosed during pregnancy, affects 8.8% of pregnancies in Spain that means more than 40,000 women per year. This prevalence is based on the National Diabetes Data Group criteria, previous to the 4th workshop on Gestational Diabetes (1998), but, if the new diagnosis criteria proposed by the International Associations of Diabetes and Pregnancy Study Groups, based on the most important study never made before on this topic, prevalence would increase to the double. When a women is diagnosed, the risk of complications for her and the child increases and, therefore, she has to start an specific diet and frequent visits to the diabetes center in order to check that glucose values do not exceed 95 mg/dl before or 140 mg/dl 1-hour after meals. In other case, she should start insulin treatment. Our project is aimed to develop intelligent tools based on neuro-diffuse techniques and integrated in a telemedicine system that allows control of gestational diabetes automatically, guaranteeing glucose control objectives consecution and avoiding face-to-face visits to the health care center. Furthermore, educational and motivation tools for a healthy behaviour will be included. At the end of the study efficacy and security about insulin management will be compare with the recommendations proposed by the diabetes team and data about direct and indirect costs will be calculated. The investigators anticipate that the smart telemedicine system can allow us to detect high blood glucose values earlier than in-person scheduled visits.