Effectiveness of reminders in increasing compliance to SBGM Essay

Effectiveness of reminders in increasing compliance to SBGM - Essay Example According to the research various studies have been carried out on the impact of self reminders and the use of SMBG in the monitoring of diabetes. In a paper by Karter, et.al., the authors sought to assess the impact of self-monitoring blood glucose levels in improving blood sugar levels. Their study was carried out as a cohort design which was applied in order to detect the relation between self-monitoring frequency and the first glycosylated hemoglobin level in 1997. The authors were able to establish clear results which indicated that the use of self-monitoring blood glucose tests was also associated with lower HbA1c levels. All in all, the study revealed that with more frequent SMBG processes applied, it was possible to achieve lower glucose levels and therefore better outcomes for patients with diabetes. In yet another study by Karter and colleagues, the authors set out to establish the various barriers in the application of SMBG. Their study was a cross-sectional study which so ught to evaluate SMBG use and its barriers in about 44,000 diabetic patients who were being treated in the Kaiser Permanente Northern California Region. The authors were able to establish that 60% of type 1 diabetic patients and 67% type 2 diabetic patients indicated a lesser frequency in their SMBG. Most of the reasons for their failure to carry out their SMBG included the following: longer time since diagnosis, male sex, age, ethnic minority, lower education, lower income, non-English speaking, high cost of glucometer strips, smoking, and excessive smoking. In effect, the authors were able to highlight that there were significant gaps in the actual and recommended SMBG practices in the organization covered with the dominant elements relating to ethnicity and language barriers being strong determinants of SMBG compliance. Moreover, low income also seems to impact the use of SMBG with the affordability of these strips put to issue (Karter, et.al., 2000). Despite studies proving that patients’ improved blood glucose levels with SMBG, various studies reveal that there is a lack of compliance with home blood glucose monitoring. Burge (2001) discusses that about 67% of patients with diabetes fail to routinely evaluate their blood glucose and they have various reasons for such failure. These reasons include: pain and soreness, wide variation in the recommended frequency of blood sugar monitoring, and the perception that home SMBG is less recommended in their care. The study by Burge (2001) sought to study current

DATA MINING Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

DATA MINING - Research Paper Example In fact, the early stages of predictive analytics involve product recommendations and behavioral targeting. Another advantage is the possibility of behavior-based advertising. In order to achieve this, the available data is analyzed to predict the areas which interest each customer and the advertisements of that area are presented to the customer. Yet another area where this predictive analytics can be useful is issues like fundraising for nonprofits. In order to do this, often, companies filter the data to identify donation amounts. Similar is the case of insurance pricing and selection. In fact, it is possible to offer individually tailored insurance packages by analyzing the available data. In addition, it is possible for insurance companies to assess insurance risk using the data. Another area where predictive analytics is highly useful is email targeting. In order to do this, companies identify the nature of the emails each customer is likely to respond to and emails are designe d accordingly. However, one of the most important areas of utilizing predictive analytics is retention of customers. It is possible to identify customer defection and attrition through predictive analytics. This will help in reaching customers immediately and effectively stopping their going away. Admittedly, associations discovery helps businesses in a number of different ways. Associations discovery involves indentifying the relationship that exists between the sales of different things or services. In simple terms, association is the discovery of various association relationships in a set of items or services. First of all, this helps organizations identify the related items a customer is likely to buy so that the customer is offered all the related items from the same company. This helps save the time and effort of the customer and ensures that the customer is retained. In addition, it ensures that companies are enabled to sell more by keeping all those items closer which are of ten sold together. Admittedly, various organizations around the world are effectively utilizing this facility. The first example is Wal-Mart. As Khattak, Khan and Lee (2010) point out, Wal-Mart uses basket analysis and clustering in order to smoothen the business transactions; and this helps the company identify the most sold products, identify the customers based on their purchasing capacity, divide the customers based on their arrival time, and identify the items of major trade. Web mining has its own unique advantages either in the form of selling more products or in the form of reduced costs. The web data collected on customers should be categorized and clustered in order to use the same for various purposes ranging from developing marketing strategies, customer relationships, and competitive analysis. It is possible for a company to utilize usage mining or web log data in order to identify a potential customer and reach out to that customer with a tempting offer. The various fo rms of web mining ranging from structure mining, usage mining and content mining offer considerable amount of marketing intelligence. This results in more personalized strategies from the part of companies, more sales, more satisfied customers and higher customer loyalty and retention. Admittedly, data mining algorithms are likely to err seriously in the real production environment. So, it becomes necessary to check their validity before using them in the real working environment. The first way of validating a particular algorithm