Press Release

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27/08/2008

  
Intellect comments on Department of Health diabetes report – ‘Five years on: delivering the diabetes National Service Framework’

Intellect, the trade association for the UK technology sector, welcomes the Department of Health’s (DH) report on the National Service Framework for diabetes.  In meeting the challenges laid out by the report, it is important to take into account how telehealth (essentially remote patient monitoring) can help support both patients and clinicians.

With the growing problems of an ageing population and a finite amount of resources, telehealth solutions are a vital tool in providing care for diabetes.  By performing simple tasks at home, eg measuring their own blood sugar levels, blood pressure or heart rate, patients can take charge of their own care.  The information generated is then automatically transmitted to clinicians, which reduces the need for patients to come into health centres or for nurses to pay home visits.

Adrian Flowerday, chair of Intellect’s Telehealth Group and Docobo MD, has over a decade of experience working to help patients and clinicians via telehealth.  He highlights below three examples of how telehealth benefits diabetes care:

“First, for patients with Type-1 diabetes, telehealth can help clinicians to better understand a patient’s insulin usage and enable appropriate medication titration.  Second, post diagnosis of Type-2 diabetes, two to three months of telehealth can help to educate patients about their condition and any necessary lifestyle changes, monitor potential periods of depression, and can help clinicians to keep their patients’ blood-glucose levels under control.  And third, for all diabetes patients, telehealth can serve as a long term reminder system for patients to monitor their blood sugar.”

Telehealth can help patients stay healthy longer, puts patients more in charge of their own care, and supports clinicians in managing their patients more efficiently – all goals of Lord Darzi’s NHS Next Stage Review.  The value of telehealth is recognised by the NHS, as is demonstrated by the Whole System Demonstrator programme and NHS Connecting for Health’s wider work on assistive technology.

A broader application of such telehealth programmes would help provide a higher quality of diabetes care.

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