One way is You can implement web socket based solution to update front-end without using timers,(i assumed you have web front-end)
front-end listen through a web socket and once backend db updated you can notify the update using the socket connection, then you can implement a mechanism to fetch updated data and update the front-end, if you have to update only few information, socket connection itself is capable of sending those to the front-end, but if you have complex data set to display you may use another service to serve data, after you get the notification through the socket connection you can use that service to fetch data.
probably if you can provide little more information regarding how your application is architected we may be able to give a better answer.