Diabetes technology access report published

By Editor
23rd January 2019
Care planning, Commissioning Continuous glucose monitoring Medical devices NHS England

A national approach must be introduced across the country to ensure everyone gets access to the latest diabetes technologies, a new report has recommended.  

The Association of British Clinical Diabetologists (ABCD) has published a series of actions within a document entitled Increasing the Uptake of New Technologies in Diabetes: Recommended Actions.

The report, released this week, has summarised key findings from the group’s November’s National Summit meeting for clinicians, commissioners, trust managers, people with diabetes and other stakeholders. Speaking at the event, one attendee said: “The current system for reviewing and launching new technology within a local health economy is not fit for purpose.”

This issue has been highlighted with the recent variations on the uptake of flash glucose monitoring, which was also discussed at last year’s ABCD Clinical & Commissioning News Live.

Potential to transform

The general consensus among healthcare professionals is that technology has the “potential to transform care” for people with diabetes, helping them to self-manage their condition better, according to the report. But historically take-up has been slow for many reasons, such as  “perceived additional cost to the system”, the report stated.

The report said this problem becomes more widespread when many people with type 1 diabetes are denied access to the FreeStyle Libre™ because of the so-called ‘postcode lottery’, which led to NHS England intervening last year.

As a result, in addition to adopting a national approach to new technology, the report urges local health economies to develop a methodology to make a reasoned decision on the objectives of using new technology and make the appropriate investment decisions with template tools, such as a business case.

Consequently, ABCD is keen to organise a number of pilots to develop and test such a methodology and tools.

As Sir Muir Gray, best known for the UK National Screening Programme and the National Library for Health, was also involved in the Summit, there will be several partners who will be involved, these will be:

  • ABCD ( Lead Advisers )
  • Local NHS Health Economy
  • Triple Value Healthcare Team ( Led by Sir Muir Gray )
  • Innovation Technology Partner ( Industry )
  • Medical Management Services Ltd

Local heath economies (ICS/STP, ACO) who are interested in running a pilot should get in touch with ABCD.

With the NHS Plan to develop integration with ICS’s/STP’s they should help to break down the NHS’ “silo” budgeting where organisations only care about the costs and benefits they incur rather than the broader picture of the local population.

The report has published a series of recommendations for stakeholders, including the NHS, the Government, individual NHS organisations, clinicians and clinical diabetes networks. To read the section in full, click here.

The report also highlights a series of barriers that may be causing the slow uptake to technologies with suggested solutions to the problems.

The document concluded: “While the current commissioning battles may be about flash and real-time CGM, there are other new technologies in development, coming ever closer to the goal of an artificial pancreas. Some of the new technology coming on-stream will allow people almost to forget that they have diabetes.

“It is likely there will be massive demand from people for this and their GP or consultant will be asked about availability – possibly even before they have full information on the technology.”

The authors state that all healthcare professionals need to ensure they are “up to speed on technological developments” and have the “knowledge and confidence” to help people with diabetes.

They also wrote that the NHS centrally and the Government need to “respond to the pace of change in technology for diabetes – and many other clinical areas”.

They wrote: “The rapid arrival of new technology will also mean much of it has not been subject to randomised controlled trials or will not have been formally assessed by NICE. There may still be unanswered questions over costs and benefits. Technology will continue to challenge an NHS which is not currently set up for rapid adoption.”

To read the report in full, click here.

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