The World Diabetes Distress Studies project aims to study the complex interplays between lifestyle, psychological factors and biological parameters (such as glycemic and blood pressure variabilities, pulse wave velocity) that are key in the daily management of type 1 or type 2 diabetes and the development of diabetes-related complications.
To do so, comprehensive observational studies are implemented to combine patients’ digitosomes, an emerging concept gathering all the data generated online by an individual (ie. data from social media such as Twitter), with clinical and epidemiological data. New patterns of key parameters will be identified, and both their determinants and their associations with diabetes distress studied, quality of life and diabetes-related complications.
The key points of this project rely on using an Artificial Intelligence approach and Big Data analyses and developing an Open science for diabetes research will be freely available to the international research community (interested in diabetes but easily adaptable to other chronic diseases).
Moving from a world where few patients have been characterized by only a few recent measurements of fasting glucose levels or glycated hemoglobin, to a world where we will be able to simultaneously study thousands of points of various key parameters on large samples of patients will profoundly change the way we characterize individuals living with diabetes. This is a real game changer that we must anticipate in order to provide solid independent results, transferable to patients.
The WDDS project was funded by the MSDAvenir foundation.
