Agile Health Announces New Diabetes Empowerment Program

NASHVILLE, Tenn., Oct. 15, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Agile Health, a mobile healthcare solutions provider, today announced the release of myAgileLife™, a text messaging based health engagement program designed to help individuals with Type II Diabetes master the behavioral skills necessary to achieve a lifetime of healthier outcomes. Developed in a medical research institute and validated via a soon-to-be-published clinical trial, myAgileLife provides daily support to help program participants affect the foundational changes in lifestyle and self-care behaviors required to successfully manage their diabetes. 

The American Diabetes Association (ADA) reports that, as of 2012, the number of Americans diagnosed with diabetes had grown to 22.3 million, reflecting an 84.3% increase from 12.1 million in 2002. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) estimates an additional 7 million adults have undiagnosed diabetes, with approximately 1.9 million people newly diagnosed each year. This mounting public health epidemic is a leading cause of renal failure, blindness, amputations, and death, costing the nation $245 billion annually, including $176 billion in direct medical cost and $69 billion in lost productivity. The good news is that many health implications associated with diabetes can be avoided through achievable behavioral changes including healthier eating, exercise, medication adherence, and self-monitoring.

myAgileLife encourages these elemental behavioral changes by leveraging the power of text messaging to provide a simple, understandable, yet deeply engaging support program that can be delivered cost efficiently to virtually anyone, anywhere, anytime. The program is a six month intensive process designed to help individuals who are newly diagnosed with diabetes, as well as those who have been diagnosed for some time but have been unsuccessful in establishing and maintaining glycemic control.  Daily guidance and support is provided through a personalized combination of scheduled outbound messages, reminders, quizzes and challenges, as well as in-the-moment support delivered when and where it is needed.

Rooted in proven behavioral science, myAgileLife provides relevant and timely messages to help individuals cope with the physical and emotional challenges that are often an impediment to self-efficacy. It also provides a structured framework combining the information, motivation, and behavioral skills necessary to establish lifelong habits for successful self-care. The clinical messages are crafted from the National Diabetes Education Program (NDEP) and aligned with the ADA's standards for Diabetes Self-Management Education (DSME) to help program participants understand, monitor and manage their blood glucose levels, medication therapy, heart health, diet and exercise, and other key self-management topics established in the guidelines. The messaging is also designed to help encourage and empower individuals to establish and maintain a productive primary care relationship, and to rationally utilize the broader health care system to avoid the debilitating and costly complications that trend with poor glycemic control.

The new program was developed by a team of clinicians, researchers and behavioral scientists at the University of Southern California's (USC) Keck School of Medicine.  It was studied and refined via an initial Pilot Trial published in 2012 in Diabetes Technology and Therapeutics, and validated via a six month randomized control trial (RCT) conducted in 2012 at Los Angeles County Hospital. The RCT produced very promising outcomes and has recently been accepted for publication in a major U.S. medical journal. Agile Health engaged the program's principal designers/researchers to work in collaboration with the company's chief behavioral officer and product development team to execute additional refinements based on the RCT outcomes and feedback from focus groups conducted with the RCT participants. The team has now configured the completed work for commercial deployment through Agile Health's new state-of-the-art mobile health messaging engine designed to enable personalized and interactive individual engagement via a highly scalable and customizable technology platform.   

About Agile Health

Agile Health provides mobile healthcare engagement solutions that create lasting behavior change and deliver better health outcomes. These solutions are engineered to help employers, health plans, population health and wellness companies, and health care provider organizations cost effectively increase engagement within their member/patient populations. Each is designed and clinically verified to reshape individual behaviors that drive targeted high-value health and wellness objectives, and each is enabled via a personal, sequential and bite-sized dialogue delivered in a way that is compatible with today's mobile-enabled lifestyle. For more information, call Agile Health at (847) 955-1905, email [email protected], or visit www.agilehealth.com.

myAgileLife is a trademark of Agile Health. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners

SOURCE Agile Health