Continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) devices could become the leading solution for a growing diabetes population in the US if the FDA’s proposed changes to reimbursement go ahead, says GlobalData. The leading data and analytics company notes that fully reimbursed CGM systems would provide relief to a huge number of diabetes patients, the majority of which currently have to undergo invasive self-testing several times a day.

James Spencer, Data Scientist at GlobalData, comments: “CGM devices currently make up a small proportion of the total glucose monitoring market—only 10% of total devices sold—but they could easily become the main glucose monitoring solution if they were reimbursed. These devices provide constant updates on glucose levels and enable diabetes patients to self-medicate only when needed. This is a vast improvement on more traditional systems, where forgetting to test just once can lead to a serious medical event.”

Companies and healthcare professionals have been pushing for much wider acceptance of CGMs.

Spencer continues: “On the company front, offering a widely accepted CGM device would be a huge opportunity to compete against older methods for glucose monitoring, leading to huge growth. However, insurance companies hold huge sway over which devices become successful due to reimbursement.”

That CGMs are not widely accepted as reimbursable devices is greatly impactful on their potential for growth, despite the benefits these devices can bring.

Spencer adds: “The potential for CGMs is supported by the current growth of Dexcom’s un-reimbursed G7 CGM. Even with such strong economic headwinds, the device is still causing huge growth for Dexcom, with around 17% growth in the US last year.”