NHS to provide diabetes glucose monitors for patients

NHS England has announced that wearable glucose monitors will be made available to tens of thousands more people with type 1 diabetes from April 2019.

To coincide with World Diabetes Day, Simon Stevens, chief executive of NHS England, has announced action to end the current variation patients in some parts of the country are facing to access Freestyle Libre.

From April 2019, patients with Type 1 diabetes will be able to receive the wearable sensor, which is the size of a £2 coin and sits on the arm, on prescription from their local GP or diabetes team helping them to better manage their blood sugar levels, given that they qualify in line with NHS clinical guidelines.

The technology, championed by the NHS as the kind of innovation that enables patients to better manage their own heath, should help people with Type 1 diabetes achieve better health outcomes, with benefits for patients including: the ability to easily notice when sugar levels are starting to rise or drop, so action can be taken earlier; more confidence for patients in managing their own condition; and not having to do as many finger-prick checks.

There are now over three million people in England with a diagnosis of diabetes and a further 940,000 living with diabetes that are yet to be diagnosed. Of those with a diagnosis of diabetes, it is estimated that 300,000 have Type 1 diabetes.

Stevens said: “Increasingly the NHS is going to be offering patients this sort of technology to help them more easily manage their own long term health problem. In the NHS of the future, for many conditions you’re going to get NHS support direct from your smartphone or wearable device rather than having to trek to regular hospital outpatient appointments. Supporting people with modern tools to manage conditions such as Type 1 diabetes is about to become much more widespread. Innovations such as these also free up time and resources for the NHS as a whole.

“As the NHS prepares to put digital health and technology at the heart of our long term plan for the future, NHS England is taking important action so that regardless of where you live, if you’re a patient with Type 1 diabetes you can reap the benefits of this life improving technology.”

Partha Kar, Associate National Clinical Director for Diabetes at NHS England, said: “This is an exciting and welcome step forward as the aim is to have uniform prescribing policy across the NHS, irrespective of where someone with Type 1 diabetes lives. This will be based on previous national guidance issued- with the provision of updating it as further evidence accrues.”

Chris Askew, chief executive of Diabetes UK, commented: “Once in place, these measures should mean an end to the variation in availability and the postcode lottery that have dogged access to this life-changing technology. This decision demonstrates that the NHS is seizing the opportunities presented by new technology, but also that it has listened to the voices of many thousands of people living with and affected by diabetes across the UK. Everyone who has called for fair and equitable access to this technology – through both funding and eligibility criteria – should feel rightly proud that they been heard today.

“The diabetes crisis is a fight that must be fought on many fronts, and Diabetes UK will continue to champion access to new and established technology – and gold standard care – wherever variation and inaccessibility exist.”