[Technology and diabetes: lights and shadows]

Abstract

"Diabetes technology" is the expression used to describe the hardware, devices, and software that people with diabetes use to manage blood glucose levels, stave off diabetes complications, reduce the burden of living with diabetes, and improve quality of life. This writing is focus on continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) with the most common devices currently in use. The complexity and rapid change of the diabetes technology landscape can also be a barrier to patient and provider implementation. The almost continuous availability of glycemic data deriving from CGM could have a negative impact on the quality of life of patients due to data overload and stress for frequent alarms. Narrative medicine can be of help. Narrative medicine has been defined as medicine practiced with narrative skills of recognizing, absorbing, interpreting and being moved by stories of illness. The art of medicine has roots that lie deep in developing the biopsychosocial connection. Understanding a human body (both its physiology and pathology) along with components of emotional and spiritual cores can lead to provision of excellent medical care and better outcomes for people with diabetes.