Hope Warshaw, long time diabetes educator, 2016 President of the American Association of Diabetes Educators (AADE), offers details about the multi-year and ongoing collaboration between AADE and Welldoc. This collaboration has been built on the goal to enable AADE’s members (diabetes educators) to develop the skills and have the resources to integrate digital health solutions into their work as the delivery of health care transforms. Warshaw describes how the AADE leadership was encouraged, by Welldoc’s thought leaders, Anand Iyer, PhD, MBA, and Malinda Peeples, RN, MS, CDE; to take the leap into the digital health space.
Welldoc and AADE have since collaborated on two significant endeavors described by Warshaw. In early 2017 Welldoc licensed AADE’s Diabetes Self-Management Education and Support (DSMES) curriculum, used by diabetes educators to deliver in-person classes, to digitize it for integration into Welldoc’s BlueStar for type 2 diabetes. With this digitized curriculum integrated into BlueStar, Welldoc created a patient journey to deliver this critical diabetes self-care education.
The second collaboration was launched in mid-2017. The organizations jointly developed the Diabetes Digital Health Learning Network to build on the goal of helping diabetes educators and AADE embrace the new world of digital health and technology.
