Barcelona to provide the finish line for the first major European bicycle tour against diabetes

• On Wednesday, September 18 the city will welcome more than 100 riders participating in the mHealth Grand Tour – a third of the runners are diabetics – crossing Europe to raise awareness of the disease and to promote the development of solutions that improve the lives of those suffering from it.
• Barcelona backs this initiative as the world capital of mobile technologies. These technologies will be present during the tour to monitor glucose levels in the blood of 30 riders and study their results.
• The application of mobile technologies will prevent 5 million Europeans from contracting diabetes.

September 13, 2013

Despite the high incidence of diabetes in Western societies– 55 million Europeans are diabetic – and proof that exercise is a fundamental element in its prevention and control, there is very little research published on the topic. Given that mobile technologies offer researchers an instrument to perform live clinical trials, the mHealth Grand Tour will monitor the vital signs and levels of glucose in the blood of most of the riders. The data will be captured via a mobile phone network and a medical team will later analyze them and present its conclusions to the medical community.

The Novo Nordisk cycling team is the development team, and one of the participants in the tour, exemplifying the links between diabetes and sport: the fact that all of its members have type-1 diabetes does not prevent them from participating in many of the major races on the international cycling circuit.

Barcelona, the headquarters of “mobile health” development

The arrival of the mHealth Grand Tour in Barcelona gives new impetus to the Barcelona Mobile World Capital’s mHealth competence center.

mHealth or “mobile health” defines health-monitoring practices that may be carried out through mobile devices, such as patient monitoring, the collection of clinical data, the measuring of vital signs, and the management of medical records. It is precisely in this way that the center located in Barcelona works in collaboration with various branches of the public administration and with companies, promoting new projects under the supervision of the project’s director, Joan Cornet.