Currently submitted to: Journal of Medical Internet Research
Date Submitted: May 6, 2026
Open Peer Review Period: May 6, 2026 - Jul 1, 2026
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
NOTE: This is an unreviewed Preprint
Warning: This is a unreviewed preprint (What is a preprint?). Readers are warned that the document has not been peer-reviewed by expert/patient reviewers or an academic editor, may contain misleading claims, and is likely to undergo changes before final publication, if accepted, or may have been rejected/withdrawn (a note "no longer under consideration" will appear above).
Peer review me: Readers with interest and expertise are encouraged to sign up as peer-reviewer, if the paper is within an open peer-review period (in this case, a "Peer Review Me" button to sign up as reviewer is displayed above). All preprints currently open for review are listed here. Outside of the formal open peer-review period we encourage you to tweet about the preprint.
Citation: Please cite this preprint only for review purposes or for grant applications and CVs (if you are the author).
Final version: If our system detects a final peer-reviewed "version of record" (VoR) published in any journal, a link to that VoR will appear below. Readers are then encourage to cite the VoR instead of this preprint.
Settings: If you are the author, you can login and change the preprint display settings, but the preprint URL/DOI is supposed to be stable and citable, so it should not be removed once posted.
Submit: To post your own preprint, simply submit to any JMIR journal, and choose the appropriate settings to expose your submitted version as preprint.
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
Examining inequities in the use of Continuous Glucose Monitors Among People
ABSTRACT
Background:
Continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) offers clinical and behavioural benefits for people with type 2 diabetes (T2D), including improved glycaemic control and enhanced self-management. However, important evidence gaps remain regarding whether CGM use is equitably distributed across patient groups and whether
Objective:
To examine the relationship between CGM use among individuals with type 2 diabetes (T2D) and a range of patient characteristics, including socio-demographic factors linked to health inequities, digital health literacy, clinical characteristics, and service utilisation.
Methods:
A cross-sectional online survey was conducted in November 2024 among adults in the UK with self-reported type 2 diabetes (T2D), recruited via the YouGov panel. The primary outcome was self-reported CGM use. Predictor variables included PROGRESS-Plus characteristics (age, gender, ethnicity, religion, education, occupation, household income, disability, and social engagement), digital health literacy (eHEALS scale), clinical characteristics (disease duration, current treatment, and complications), overall health status (number of long-term conditions), and healthcare utilisation (frequency of visits). Descriptive statistics and multivariable logistic regression were used to examine associations between CGM use and patient characteristics.
Results:
Among 403 participants, 12.7% reported CGM use. Nearly half of participants were aged 65 years or older, and 56.80% were male. Most participants were White 83.90% and lived in urban areas. Higher odds of CGM use were observed among insulin users (OR=3.80, 95% CI: 1.6–9.22, p<0.001). No other demographic, clinical, or service utilisation variables were statistically significantly associated with CGM use.
Conclusions:
CGM use was primarily driven by insulin therapy, consistent with established clinical pathways within the National Health Service that prioritise access for this group. No significant variation was observed across demographic, socioeconomic, or health literacy-related characteristics, suggesting no clear evidence of inequalities in this sample. These findings indicate potentially equitable access, although further research in larger and more diverse populations is needed to confirm these patterns.
Citation
Request queued. Please wait while the file is being generated. It may take some time.
Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.