The Peterson Health Technology Institute (PHTI) has announced a new independent evaluation of digital health tools for type 2 diabetes, with findings expected in 2027. The assessment will revisit the market three years after PHTI's 2024 review concluded that many widely used digital diabetes management platforms failed to deliver meaningful clinical improvements while increasing overall healthcare spending. This time, the evaluation will account for major changes in diabetes care, particularly the growing use of continuous glucose monitors (CGMs) and GLP-1 medications.
PHTI's original evaluation examined digital diabetes platforms that primarily combined traditional blood glucose monitoring with remote coaching and behavioral support. The organization found that these solutions generally produced limited improvements in HbA1c and did not generate sufficient medical savings to offset their costs. The findings raised questions for employers and health plans investing heavily in digital chronic disease management programs.
Since then, the diabetes technology landscape has changed considerably. CGMs are increasingly being used beyond insulin-dependent populations, giving digital platforms access to continuous glucose data rather than occasional readings. At the same time, GLP-1 receptor agonists have become an increasingly important component of metabolic care, creating demand for digital tools that can support medication initiation, adherence, dose management, nutrition and side-effect management alongside traditional diabetes interventions.
The new assessment will examine whether these developments have translated into better clinical and economic outcomes. PHTI plans to evaluate how platforms use CGM data to guide interventions, how effectively they support patients using GLP-1 therapies and whether newer multimodal programs deliver durable improvements in measures such as HbA1c. The analysis will also consider whether any resulting reductions in downstream healthcare utilization are sufficient to justify the cost of the digital programs themselves.
The evaluation is intended to provide employers, health plans and healthcare organizations with independent evidence for purchasing and benefit-design decisions. With more than 40 million Americans living with diabetes and significant investment continuing to flow into digital metabolic health platforms, PHTI's updated assessment will test whether the industry's evolution toward continuous monitoring and medication-enabled care has meaningfully improved the value these solutions provide.
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