When managing diabetes, patient education and empowerment are two pivotal components in equipping patients to develop the ability to make informed decision about their own treatment and care plans. Clinical guidelines have long adopted self-monitoring blood glucose (SMBG) as a useful tool in helping diabetes patient to maintain glycemic control, and glucometer is a standard home monitoring tool for every newly diagnosed diabetic patient. Since the year 2000, the emergence of Continuous Glucose Monitoring (CGM) has become a game-changer for SMBG. This painless glucose monitoring tool allows instantaneous real-time display of glucose levels, trends and variabilities with 24/7 coverage. Alerts and alarms can be set for informing patients about actual or impending hypo- and hyperglycemia. The widespread use of smartphone popularized the use of CGM as an Internet-of-things (IoT) health care wearable among the diabetes population. And the COVID-19 epidemic has accelerated the clinical use of CGM in inpatient glucose monitoring. It is foreseeable that the use of CGM will expand in chronic care management in patients with diabetes. In the era of big data, large scale data analysis of CGM glucose data is underway. The upcoming development in CGM technology may provide new insight and new changes to our clinical practice in diabetes care in the years to come.
