New York becomes the first American city to monitor diabetes

Diabetes has joined the expanding list of illnesses reported to the city health officials in New York. This makes New York the first city in the U.S to monitor diabetes. The city health department will collect the results of thousands of blood sugar tests from medical laboratories and analyze the data to identify the diabetics struggling to control their disease. Some of them may be contacted to help them manage their disease better. While the program will be of good help to diabetics and their doctors, it raises issues of privacy. People who don’t want to share their medical data can opt out of the program. Most of the illnesses reported to the city health officials are either contagious in nature or raise environmental concerns. Even though diabetes doesn’t fall in either of the two categories, monitoring it makes sense as it is the fourth leading cause of death in the city.

via Yahoo! news