"People who are diagnosed with prediabetes can delay or prevent the disease if they change their lifestyle and lose a significant amount of weight. But heres the challenge How can people be motivated to eat healthier and move more Increasingly the answer might include digital medicine. Just telling people to do things doesnt work says Sean Duffy CEO of Omada Health https If it were easy there wouldnt be more than  million adults https in the U.S. with prediabetes. Omada has rolled out a digital program delivered on smartphones and other devices that incorporates all the ingredients known to help people overhaul their habits. It includes ecoaching peer support education diet and exercise tracking and electronic nudging. Forget to weigh in or track your meals Youll get texts or emails reminding you to do it. Week by week we have lessons on different themes  Duffy explains. Theyre interactive and theres little games to keep it dynamic. Participants are matched with a group of peers online and theyre led by a coach who they can text or email back and forth with. We call it the symphony effect Duffy says because there are multiple methods working together to help participants stay on track. Getting started Sometimes fear is a good motivator for losing weight. Don Speranza is in his late s and lives on a farm along the Columbia River in Washington state where he runs a bed and breakfast with his wife. Hes also the chef at the inn. Im immersed in food all day Speranza says. Article continues after this message from our sponsor Last year he received an email from his doctor at Kaiser Permanente with some test results. It was like a gut punch  Speranza says. Based on his weight which had been crept up to  pounds and the results of his bloodwork to test his glucose he was diagnosed with prediabetes. This means his blood sugar level was elevated but not yet high enough to be diagnosed with the condition. It was a real cometoJesus moment Speranza recalls. He knew that diabetes increased the risk of heart disease and can lead to many other complications including vision loss and amputations. When he signed up for the Omada program the first thing he received was a scale. He began to weigh himself daily. He also began to track what he was eating. Each day hed log his weight and meals and upload the data to a dashboard. His coach could see the data too and give him advice and encouragement. Oh my coach  Speranza says. I cant sing her praises enough she was so responsive. Even though they never met in person they bonded. He took her advice and suggestions. He realized for instance that he ate too much of the wrong things. Homemade breads and croissants pasta and pizza Speranza ticks off the list of baked treats with a mix of reverence and resolve in his voice. Speranza realized he had to change his relationship with these foods. Temporarily he cut out all these refined carbohydrates. He had to train himself to resist all the treats he bakes for his guests. Instead he began to fill his plate with more protein vegetables and healthy fats. He raises animals on his organic farm so he eats pastured meats and a lot of salmon. Week by week Id make one or two little changes at a time  Speranza says. It was a game changer. The weight began to fall off and he started to move more. His coach nudged him to switch up his morning routine. He says he was accustomed to sitting each morning for an hour or so just drinking coffee. Now Ill start the coffee he says but before he drinks it Ill go outside and walk. He tracks his movement withe a wearable electronic device. He began with  steps logged during his morning walk but has now increased his steps significantly. And he rides a stationary bike too. Now I can almost keep up with my wife Speranza says with a laugh. Since last May he has lost about  pounds  to be exact but it fluctuates a bit and his blood sugar has returned to the normal range. He no longer has prediabetes. I feel so much better Speranza says. As a baker he buys flour in  pound sacks. Now when I look at the sacks Im aghast to think thats what I was carrying around. Success is not automatic Not every Omada Health participant makes the progress theyre aiming for. After all pulling off these changes is difficult Im still on the journey to get to more optimal health says Lonny Northrup who lives in Utah. He lost weight while participating in the program but when he hit a plateau in his weight loss he felt stuck and he says he didnt get the personal support he would have liked from the program. For many days in a row I got an email saying Hey we noticed you didnt step on the scale  he says. For some reason that didnt get escalated to the coach. So he says that was a disappointment. Overall he says he would recommend the Omada Health program to a friend. I got really good specific recommendations that worked for me and my lifestyle Northrup says. And he says the convenience of having the program delivered on a smartphone was key too. There is some evidence that these kinds of programs are working. A recent pilot study with Utahbased Intermountain Healthcare httpsintermountainhealthcare.org that included about  people all of whom were at high risk of Type  diabetes found that  percent of the participants completed the Omada program and lost at least  percent of their body weight. And about  in  participants lost  percent of their body weight or more. Thats promising because theres evidence that a  percent body weight loss cuts the risk https of developing diabetes by about  percent. This is one of the most exciting things says Mark Greenwood a physician with Intermountain. Omada Health is not the only player in this space. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recognizes httpsnccd.cdc.govDDT_DPRPCity.aspxSTATEOTHCITYOTH many diabetes prevention lifestyle change programs delivered both inperson and online including Vida https which bills itself as a health transformation team that is data and techdriven. Additionally traditional players in the weight loss space such as Weight Watchers now offer some similar incentives https such as personal coaching. Greenwood says hed like to see many more patients try diabetes prevention programs. And he says hes pleased with the results of the pilot study of Omadas program. The data really does confirm that when you give people tools and help instead of just preaching to them it really does help."