Who Stops Scanning: How a Continuous Glucose Monitor Manufacturer Used Consulting and Analytics to Identify Which Patient Segments Were Abandoning Device Use and Why

Continuous glucose monitoring works best when patients understand how to use the data it generates. A device that produces a glucose trend graph every fifteen minutes is clinically useful only if the patient knows what the graph means, what actions they should take in response to different patterns, and how their dietary and activity choices are translating into the glucose curves they are seeing.

The client’s commercial team had been tracking renewal rates as the primary commercial metric and had noticed they were below projection, but had not disaggregated the cancellation pattern by patient characteristics to understand whether specific segments were driving the shortfall. The clinical data team had begun to notice the scan frequency decline pattern independently but had not connected it to the renewal data in a way that produced an actionable diagnosis.

Understanding who was disengaging before they cancelled, and what the disengagement pattern looked like in the data, was the diagnostic step that could convert a renewal rate problem into a specific clinical and commercial intervention.

Key Challenges

• No analytical framework connecting the clinical data team’s scan frequency observations to the commercial team’s renewal rate shortfall.
• No patient segment analysis distinguishing which groups were driving the renewal shortfall from those showing normal engagement and renewal patterns.
• A broad reimbursement expansion that had enrolled many type two patients with no prior glucose monitoring experience, a segment potentially underserved by the standard onboarding provided.
• No early warning system identifying patients showing engagement decline before they reached the cancellation decision.
• Clinical education gaps in the standard reimbursement pathway that the client had not designed its onboarding to address.
• Commercial team pressure to improve renewal rates before the next reimbursement contract review relied on the subscriber base numbers projected from current renewal trajectories.

A continuous glucose monitor subscription that a patient stops engaging with before cancelling is sending an early warning signal weeks before the commercial team sees a cancellation. The patient who drops from twelve scans a day to two is not yet a cancelled subscription, but they are almost certainly a cancelled subscription in waiting. Catching that signal and responding to it before the decision is made is the difference between a retention programme and a win-back programme, and win-back is considerably harder.