Gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) is a serious diabetic condition that can affect women who are pregnant. The condition is especially prevalent among the American Indian and Alaska native populations. If left undiagnosed and untreated, there are serious consequences for both the mother and child. The University of Pittsburgh School of Nursing is working to address this problem, and was undertaking a study to the existing knowledge levels of these groups and test the effectiveness of various outreach and educational models. To do this in a clinically rigorous way, Pitt needed to uniformly perform a number of tasks:
Flipside worked with a large and diverse project team that included researchers, doctors, nurses, and statisticians to design a system that met all of these requirements. The system allowed for an administrator to manage a rolling admission of study participants in a de-identified manner. Each participant could then securely log into the portal and complete a number of screening tools that were customized to the individual participant. A media-rich, interactive eBook was created to educate participants on GDM. Multiple follow up sessions were built into the system to allow for longitudinal data gathering and tracking of participants. A powerful administrator interface was created to allow Pitt to manage all of their sites across the country and export collected, deidentified data on an as-needed basis. As with other Flipside products, all of this system runs in a secure environment following the requirements of HIPAA and HITECH.
