Assessing Prevalence of Hypoglycemia in a Medical Transcription Database

The following publication developed by Novo Nordisk and leveraging Amplity Insights' unique medical transcription database supports the hypothesis that hypoglycemia is underreported in traditional claims or electronic medical record (EMR) databases. Using an unstructured and nonbillable database allowed Novo Nordisk to gain a more in-depth understanding of hypoglycemia and its prevalence.

Introduction
The prevalence of hypoglycemia in patients with diabetes mellitus is likely underreported, particularly with regard to nonsevere episodes, and representative estimates require more detailed data than claims or typical electronic health record (EHR) databases provide. This study examines the prevalence of hypoglycemia as identified in a medical transcription database.

Patients and Methods
The Amplity Insights database contains medical content dictated by providers detailing patient encounters with health care professionals (HCPs) from across the United States. Natural language processing (NLP) was used to identify episodes of hypoglycemia using both symptom-based and non-symptom-based definitions of hypoglycemic events. This study examined records of 41,688 patients with type 1 diabetes mellitus and 317,399 patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus between January 1, 2016, and April 30, 2018.

Results
Using a non-symptom-based definition, the prevalence of hypoglycemia was 18% among patients with T1DM and 8% among patients with T2DM. These estimates show the prevalence of hypoglycemia to be 2- to 9-fold higher than the 1% to 4% prevalence estimates suggested by claims database analyses.

Conclusion
In this exploration of a medical transcription database, the prevalence of hypoglycemia was considerably higher than what has been reported via retrospective analyses from claims and EHR databases. This analysis suggests that data sources other than claims and EHR may provide a more in-depth look into discrepancies between the mention of hypoglycemia events during a health care visit and documentation of hypoglycemia in patient records.

How We Can Help
Amplity Insights is a provider of medical data sets mined from unstructured text transcriptions of patient physician interactions. Ours is the only database containing full-text transcripts of dictated physician notes for physician-patient encounters, providing data, analytics, and insights not available from any other single source. Amplity Insights offers a direct view into the treatment of patients and the rationale of providers while remaining fully HIPAA compliant. Our dataset covers the United States and includes >150,000 individual multi-specialty healthcare providers and 50 million patient records. What’s more, we’re adding 2 million new records every month. To learn more, visit https://www.amplity.com/insights/.