Study: Diabetes dashboard may help physicians better deliver care to patients

COLUMBIA, Mo. — A new tool developed by researchers at the University of Missouri improved both the efficiency and accuracy of acquiring data needed for high-quality diabetes care, according to a new study.

Researchers said the diabetes dashboard, which allows doctors to view electronic information about patients’ health conditions related to diabetes on a single computer screen, provides information about patients’ vital signs, health conditions, current medications and lab tests that may need to be performed. The study, published in Annals of Family Medicine, found that physicians who used the dashboard were able to correctly identify data they were searching for 100% of the time, compared with 94% using traditional electronic medical records. Additionally, the number of mouse clicks needed to find the information was reduced from 60 to three when using the diabetes dashboard, the researchers said.

“The diabetes dashboard is so intuitive that it makes it hard for physicians not to do the right thing,” said Richelle Koopman, associate professor of family and community medicine at the University of Missouri School of Medicine and study author. “Doctors can see, at a glance, everything that might affect their decision. This frees up their minds and helps them make better decisions about patients’ care.”

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