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Bridging the gap between medical science and policy to reduce the biggest 21st century healthcare burden

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Bridging the gap between medical science and policy to reduce the biggest 21^st century healthcare burden

In November 2018 the Mayor on London Sadiq Khan, announced that junk food adverts will be banned on all London transport from February 2019 in an attempt to reduce the “ticking time bomb” of childhood obesity in the city.

London has one of the highest obesity rates in Europe with some 40% of 10 to 11-year olds either overweight or obese, with children from more deprived areas disproportionately affected. Obesity is a common and costly source of type-2 diabetes (T2DM), which is much more aggressive in youngsters and complications of the condition - blindness, amputations, heart disease and kidney failure - can present earlier. What is happening in London and the UK is replicated in varying degrees in cities and nations throughout the world: there is a global epidemic of obesity and T2DM, which together is often referred to as ‘diabesity’.

The “good” news is that at the same time Khan announced the advertising ban, the UK’s national news outlets were reporting the product of four decades of scientific research, which suggested that T2DM could be reversed by a liquid diet of 800-calories a day for three months.

Although this offers hope for millions of people, an unresolved challenge is whether this simple and cheap therapy will be implemented effectively to significantly dent the burden of diabesity, which arguably is the biggest healthcare challenge of the 21^st century.

In this Commentary

We describe some of the research behind the news reports about the therapy to reverse T2DM. Although the scientists’ innovative solution of a low-calorie liquid diet has been adopted enthusiastically by some healthcare providers and organizations specifically set up to dent the burden of diabesity, it is questionable whether the gap between science and policy can be bridged. This, we suggest, is because the prevalence of diabesity is growing at a significantly faster rate than the effect of programs to prevent and reduce the condition.

Obesity and T2DM

Obesity, which is a significant risk of T2DM, is a complex, multifaced condition, with genetic, behavioural, socioeconomic and environmental origins. Diet and sedentary lifestyles may affect energy balance through complex hormonal and neurological pathways that influence satiety. Also, urbanization, the food environment and the marketing of processed foods are contributory factors to becoming overweight and obese. Notwithstanding, the main driver of weight gain is energy intake exceeding energy expenditure.

T2DM is a chronic, progressive metabolic disease, which until recently has been perceived as incurable. Although genetic predisposition partly determines the condition’s onset, being overweight and obese are significant risk factors. Generally accepted clinical guidelines to treat the condition is to reduce glycated haemoglobin (HbA1c) - blood sugar (glucose) - levels. The HbA1c test assesses your average level of blood sugar over the past two to three months. The normal range for HbA1c is 4% to 5.9%. In well-controlled diabetic patients HbA1c levels are less than 6.5% or 48mmol/moll. High levels of HbA1c mean that you are more likely to develop diabetes complications, such as serious problems with your heart, blood vessels, eyes, kidneys, and nerves. T2DM is treated primarily with drugs and generic lifestyle advice, but many patients still develop vascular complications and life expectancy remains up to six years shorter than in people without diabetes.

Obesity

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OEDC) 2017 Health at a Glance Report warned that obesity in the UK has increased by 92% in the past two decades. Two-thirds of the UK’s adult population are overweight and 27% have a body mass index (BMI) of 30 and above, which is the official definition of obesity. In 2017 there were 0.6m obesity-related hospital admissions in the UK, an 18% increase on the previous year. Each year, obesity cost NHS England in excess of US$10bn in treatment alone.

A 2018 World Health Organization (WHO) report suggests that obesity globally has almost tripled since 1975. In 2016, more than 1.9bn adults, 18 years and older, were overweight. Of these over 650m were obese. According to a 2018 WHO report on childhood obesity 41m children under the age of 5 were overweight or obese in 2016 and over 340m children and adolescents aged 5-19 were overweight or obese.

Bad diets

Diets in the UK, and in most wealthy advanced industrial economies, tend to have insufficient fruit and vegetables, fibre and oily fish and too much added sugar, salt and saturated fat. Rising consumption of processed food and sugary drinks are significant contributors to the global obesity epidemic. A typical 20-ounce soda contains 15 to 18 teaspoons of sugar and upwards of 240 calories. A 64-ounce cola drink could have up to 700 calories. People who consume such drinks do not feel as full as if they had eaten the same number of calories from solid food and therefore do not compensate by eating less. While healthy diets are challenging for most populations, low income levels and poor education are associated with less healthy diets.

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Weight loss surgery to treat T2DM

T2DM brief epidemiology

Almost 4.6m people in the UK and 30m Americans are living with diabetes: 90% of whom have T2DM. It is estimated that 12.3m people in the UK and some 70m in the US are considered pre-diabetic, which is when you have high blood glucose levels, but not high enough to be diagnosed with diabetes. The first WHO Global report on diabetes published in 2016 suggests that 422m adults (1 in 11) worldwide are living with the condition, which has quadrupled over the past three decades. The International Diabetes Federation (IDF) estimates that this figure will rise to 642m by 2040. A further challenge is the undiagnosed. A December 2017 paper in Nature Reviews: Endocrinology suggests 46% of all cases of diabetes globally are undiagnosed and therefore at enhanced risk of complications. Until complications develop, most T2DM patients are managed within primary care, which constitutes a significant part of general practice activity. International data suggest that medical costs for people with diabetes are two to threefold greater than the average for people without diabetes.

T2DM treated but not cured

The most common therapy for T2DM patients who are overweight is metformin, which is usually prescribed when diet and exercise alone have not been enough to control your blood glucose levels. Metformin reduces the amount of sugar your liver releases into your blood and also makes your body respond better to insulin. Insulin is a hormone produced by your pancreas that allows your body to use sugar from carbohydrates in food that you eat for energy or to store glucose for future use. The hormone helps to keep your blood sugar levels from getting too high (hyperglycaemia) or too low (hypoglycaemia). Metformin does not cure T2DM and does not get rid of your glucose, but simply transfers your excess sugar from your blood to your liver. When your liver rejects your excess sugar, the medicine passes the glucose onto other organs: kidneys, nerves, eyes and heart. Much of your excess sugar gets turned into fat and hence you become overweight or obese. T2DM has long been understood to progress despite glucose-lowering therapy, with 50% of patients requiring insulin therapy within 10 years. This seemingly inexorable deterioration in control has been interpreted to mean that T2DM is treatable but not curable. Research briefly described in this Commentary suggests that T2DM can be beaten into ‘remission’, but it requires losing a lot of weight and keeping it off.

Reversing T2DM

Over the past decade a series of studies, led by Roy Taylor, Professor of Medicine and Metabolism at the University of Newcastle, England and colleagues from Glasgow University have explored the notion that losing weight could be the solution for controlling T2DM and lowering the risk of debilitating and costly complications.

Findings of a study in the December 2017 edition of the Lancet, suggested that nearly 50% of people living with T2DM who had participated in a low-calorie liquid diet of about 800 calories a day for three to five months had lost weight and had reverted to a non-T2DM state. The study was comprised of 298 adults between 20 and 65 who had been diagnosed with T2DM within the past six years drawn from 49 primary care practices in Scotland and Tyneside in England. Half of the practices put their patients on the low-calorie diet, while the rest were in a control group and received the standard of care of anti-diabetic medicines to manage their blood glucose levels. About 46% of 149 individuals with T2DM who followed a weight loss regimen achieved ‘remission’, which the study defined as a HbA1c of less than 6.5% after one year. Only 4% of the control group managed to achieve ‘remission’. ‘Remission’ rather than ‘cure’ was used to describe the reversal of T2DM because if patients put weight back on, they may become diabetic again. Results improved according to the amount of weight lost: 86% of those who lost more than 33 pounds attained remission, while 57% of those who lost 22 to 33 pounds reached that goal.

Another paper by Taylor and his colleagues published in the October 2018 edition of Cell Metabolism, examined reasons why substantial weight loss - (15kg) in some patients - produces T2DM remission in which all signs and symptoms of the condition disappear, while in other patients it does not. Using detailed metabolic tests and specially developed MRI scans, Taylor observed that fat levels in the blood, pancreas and liver were abnormally high in people with T2DM. But after following an intensive weight loss regimen, all participants in the study were able to lower their fat levels. As fat decreased inside the liver and the pancreas, some participants also experienced improved functioning of their pancreatic beta cells, which store and release insulin, controls the level of sugar in their blood and facilitates glucose to pass into their cells as a source of energy. The likelihood of regaining normal glucose control depends on the ability of the beta cells to recover. But, losing less than 1gm of fat from your pancreas through diet can re-start your normal production of insulin and thereby reverse T2DM.

“The good news for people with T2DM is that our work shows that you are likely to be able to reverse T2DM by moving that all important tiny amount of fat out of your pancreas. At present, this can only be done through substantial weight loss,” says Taylor.

While a significant proportion of participants in Taylor’s study responded to the weight loss program and achieved T2DM remission, others did not. To better understand this, researchers focused on 29 participants who achieved remission after dieting and 16 who dieted but continued to have T2DM. Taylor and his colleagues observed that people who were unable to restart normal insulin production had lived with T2DM for a longer time than those that could. Individuals who had lived with T2DM for an average of 3.8 years could not correct their condition through weight loss, while those who had the condition for an average of 2.7 years were able to regain normal blood sugar control.

“Many [patients] have described to me how embarking on the low-calorie diet has been the only option to prevent what they thought - or had been told - was an inevitable decline into further medication and further ill health because of their diabetes. By studying the underlying mechanisms, we have been able to demonstrate the simplicity of T2DM and show that it is a potentially reversible condition. but commencing successful major weight loss should be started as early as possible,” says Taylor.

Click on Newcastle University to find out more information about reversing T2DM by weight loss.

Bridging the gap between science and policy

Taylor and his colleagues describe their research findings as “very exciting” because “they could revolutionise the way T2DM is treated”, but caution that a series of management issues will need to be overcome before their therapy becomes common practice. This includes, (i) familiarizing primary care doctors and T2DM patients with the treatment regimen, (ii) establishing a generally accepted standard for what actually constitutes “remission”. Taylor and colleagues recommend “remission” to be when a patient has not taken diabetes medicines for at least two months and then has two consecutive HbA1c levels, taken two months apart, which are less than 6.5%. Researchers also recommend that data on T2DM reversal rates should be routinely collected, stored, analysed and reported.

Notwithstanding, the ‘elephant in the room’ is the vast extent of diabesity, the eye-watering rate at which it is growing and the general ineffectiveness of policy makers and prevent programs to dent the burden. Research findings presented at the 2018 European Congress on Obesity in Vienna emphasize the magnitude of the problem. If current trends continue, almost a quarter (22%) of the world’s population will be obese by 2045 (up from 14% in 2017), and 12% will have T2DM (up from 9% in 2017). Findings also suggest that in order to prevent the prevalence of T2DM from going above 10% by 2045, global obesity levels must be reduced by 25%. The problem is no less grave at the national level. For example, in the UK, if current trends continue obesity will rise from 32% today to 48% in 2045, while diabetes levels will rise from 10.2% to 12.6%, a 28% rise. This is unsustainable. Here’s the challenge for policy makers.

To stabilise UK diabetes rates over the next 25 years at 10%, which is high and extremely costly, obesity prevalence must fall from 32% to 24%. Similarly, in the US, if current trends continue over the next 25 years, then to keep diabetes rates stable over the same period, obesity in the US would have to be reduced by 10%: from 38% today to 28%.

Takeaways

Taylor and his colleagues have delivered a simple and cheap solution to one of the biggest burdens of the 21^st century. But unless there is effective strategy to implement this solution the four decades of research undertaken by Taylor and his colleagues will be wasted. Previous Commentaries have described the vast and crippling burden of diabesity and the failure of well-funded programs to make any significant dent in this vast and escalating burden, which is out of control. We have suggested, this is partly because, at the operational level, programs have tended to be predicated upon inappropriate, old fashioned, 20^th century organizational methods and technology and focused on “activities” rather than “outcomes”. At a policy level, government agencies have systematically failed to slow the rise of processed food becoming the “new tobacco”. Most UK endeavours to reduce the burden of diabesity are like putting up an umbrella to fend off a tsunami. This must change if we are to harness and effectively deploy the research findings of Professor Taylor et al.

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Can the obesity epidemic learn from the way Aids was tackled?

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behavioural techniques

chronic disease prevention

Obesity is common, serious and costly
Obese adults in the UK will soar by a staggering 73% to 26m by 2030
Obesity generates an annual loss equivalent to 3% of the UK’s GDP
Obesity cost NHS England £8bn in 2015
The obesity epidemic will only get worse unless we take effective action
Innovative research to control appetite could provide a cheap and scalable answer to the obesity epidemic
The UK’s obesity crisis should learn from the way AIDS was tackled

Can the obesity epidemic learn from the way Aids was tackled?

Obesity is a common chronic health challenge, which is serious and costly.It is one of the biggest risk factors for type-2 diabetes (T2DM) and together - obesity and T2DM - form a rapidly growing global diabesity epidemic, which today affects some 9m people in England.

Experts forecast the incidence rate of obesity will rise sharply, and bankrupt the NHS. Conventional strategies to reduce obesity and prevent T2DM have failed. According to the Mayo Clinic it is common to regain weight no matter what weight loss treatment methods you try, and you might even regain weight after weight-loss surgery. This Commentary suggests that extra resources are urgently needed to accelerate and broaden innovative obesity research.

Efforts to tackle obesity are low priority and fragmented

Overweight and obesity lead to adverse metabolic effects on blood pressure, cholesterol, triglycerides and insulin resistance. Risks of coronary heart disease, ischemic stroke, and T2DM increase steadily with raised body mass index (BMI). High BMI also increases the risk of osteoarthritis; sleep apnoea, gallbladder disease, and some cancers. Cancer Research UK predicts that obesity related cancers are expected to increase 45% in the next two decades, causing 700,000 new cases of cancer. Mortality rates will increase with increasing degrees of obesity. It is therefore important that obesity is treated aggressively. According to a 2014 McKinsey Global Institute study, the UK’s Government efforts to tackle obesity are ''too fragmented to be effective'', while investment in obesity prevention is ''relatively low given the scale of the problem''.

A multi-generational problem

The 2014 Health Survey found that 61.7% of adults in England (16 years or over) are either overweight or obese, and the prevalence of obesity among adults rose from 14.9% to 25.6% between 1993 and 2014. The number of obese adults in the UK is forecast to soar by a staggering 73% to 26m over the next 20 years.

In 2014-15, there were 440,288 hospital admissions in England due to obesity: 10 times higher than the 40,741 recorded in 2004-5. In England one in five children in their first year at school, and one in three in year 6 are obese or overweight. Also, in the past 10 years there has been a doubling of children admitted to hospital for obesity. Over the past three years 2,015 overweight youngsters needed hospital treatment, and 43 of these have had to undergo weight-loss surgery to reduce the size of their stomachs. Today, diabesity is a multi-generational problem, which suggests that far worse is still to come.

Costs and spends

The UK spends less than £638 million a year on obesity prevention programs - about 1% of the country's social cost of obesity. But the NHS spends about £8bn a year on the treatment costs of conditions related to being overweight or obese and a further £10bn on diabetes.

Obesity is a greater burden on the UK’s economy than armed violence, war and terrorism, costing the country nearly £47bn a year, the 2014 McKinsey study found. Obesity has the second-largest economic impact on the UK behind smoking, generating an annual loss equivalent to 3% of GDP. The current rate of obesity and overweight conditions suggest the cost to NHS England alone could increase from £8bn in 2015 to between £10bn and £12bn in 2020.

19^th century technologies for a 21^st pandemic

A year after the publication of the McKinsey study, the UK government launched a national Diabetes Prevention Program (DPP) led by NHS England, Public Health England (PHE), and the charity Diabetes UK (DUK). The program offers people at risk of T2DM an intensive personalised course in weight loss, physical activity and diet, comprising of 13 one-to-one, two-hour sessions, spread over nine months, and is expected to significantly reduce the estimated five million overweight and obese people in England, and thereby prevent them from developing T2DM. A previous Commentary predicted that the DPP would fail because it is using a 19^th century labour intensive method to address a 21^st epidemic.

This suggests that the diabesity epidemic will only get worse unless we take more urgent and effective action. A view supported by Majid Ezzati, Professor of Global Environmental Health at Imperial College, London, and the senior author of the most comprehensive review of obesity ever undertaken, and published in The Lancet in April 2016. According to Ezzati, “The epidemic of severe obesity is too extensive to be tackled with medications such as blood pressure lowering drugs or diabetes treatments alone, or with a few extra bike lanes”.

Radical action: weight loss surgery

The gravity of the UK’s obesity epidemic is demonstrated by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice) 2016 suggestion to lower the threshold at which overweight people are offered weight loss surgery. The UK lags behind other European countries in this regard, and experts argue that lowering the threshold would mean the number of people who qualify for weight loss surgery would increase significantly.

According to a report prepared by English surgeons, weight-loss surgery would make people healthier and save the NHS money. The report concluded that after weight loss surgery obese people are 70% less likely to have a heart attack, those with T2DM are nine times more likely to see major improvements in their condition, and also the surgery has a positive effect on angina and sleep apnoea. If all the 1.4m most severely obese people in the UK had weight loss surgery, which costs the NHS around £6,000 per operation, the total cost would be £8.4bn.

Weight loss surgery and the brain

Initially it was thought that weight-loss surgery worked by reducing the amount of food that can be held by the stomach. However, some patients were found to have elevated levels of satiety hormones, the chemical signals released by the gut to control digestion and hunger cravings in the brain. Patients who had undergone surgery were also found to prefer less fatty foods, which supports the thesis that the hormones also change the patients’ desire to eat, and reinforce the gut brain relationship. This finding reinforces the important link between the gut and the brain on which some of the most promising obesity research is predicated.

Gut brain relationship

Dr Syed Sufyan Hussain, Darzi Fellow in Clinical Leadership, Specialist Registrar and Honorary Clinical Lecturer in Diabetes, Endocrinology and Metabolism at Imperial College London describes the gut-brain relationship and explains why we eat and why we stop eating:

Cheap, safe and scalable treatment for obesity

The person who has spent most of his professional life searching for cheap, safe and scalable alternatives to weight loss surgery and ineffective weight loss therapies is Professor Sir Steve Bloom, Head of Diabetes, Endocrinology and Metabolism at Imperial College London. Bloom believes that the answer to the UK’s obesity epidemic lies in the gut-brain relationship, and is working on two innovative methods of appetite control, which he and his colleagues believe could significantly reduce the burden of obesity.

Method 1: an implantable microchip

One method is comprised of a small implantable microchip attached to the vagus nerve to suppress appetite in a natural way. The chip reads and processes both electrical and chemical signatures of appetite within the vagus nerve, and then sends electrical signals to the brain to either reduce or stop eating. Bloom has proven the method’s concept, and in 2013 was awarded €7m from the European Research Council to continue his research. Early findings suggest that chemical rather than electrical impulses are more selective and precise, and the chip reduces both consumption and hunger pangs. All things being equal, it will take another 10 years before this treatment gets to market.

Method 2: naturally occurring hormones

Bloom is also working on another method to treat obesity, which uses naturally occurring hormones that reduce appetite. Early clinical studies suggest that people will consume 13% fewer calories when they eat a meal after taking the hormones. In 2013 Bloom received £2m from the Medical Research Council to develop this research. One of the significant challenges he faces is hormones normally last only a few minutes in the human body. To overcome this Bloom and his colleagues have had to develop versions of the hormones that can last up to a week before they start breaking down. This suggests that patients could take a single weekly injection to control their appetites. Another approach would be to develop a device, which delivers the hormones continuously. While promising, this method too will take 10 years to get to market.

Takeaway: treat obesity the same as Aids

Bloom believes that if we approached obesity as we did Aids, the time to develop a cheap, effective and scalable drug for weight control could be cut by half. "The obesity pandemic is the biggest disease that has hit mankind ever in terms [of] numbers. It is killing more people than anything else has ever killed, . . . . . . . in terms of disease [there are] more deaths from obesity than anything we have known about. The time needed to develop an effective drug could be cut by more than half if conservative checks and balances were loosened. I think we might need to treat obesity in a hurry, and we are being held up. The Aids lobby forced Aids’ drugs on to the market before they had finished testing, but they turned out to be useful and lives were saved. Something similar should be considered for obesity,” says Bloom.

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Vinolia Nyaho

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Ms Vinolia Nyaho is a Senior Practice nurse, specialised in supporting patients with diabetes.

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Diabetes threatens the future stability of the UAE

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Diabetes threatens the future stability of the UAE

A new NHS diabetes pathway of care could help the UAE
UAE has the world’s second highest incidence rate of diabetes
75% of people with diabetes in the UAE do not have it under control
Diabetes accounts for 40% of UAE’s healthcare costs
Urgent need for an effective strategy to reduce UAE’s burden of diabetes

This Commentary describes how the large and escalating burden of type-2 diabetes (T2DM) in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) can be reduced by 2025.

Diabetes in the UAE

The UAE has the second-highest diabetes rate in the world. An estimated 25% of Emiratis, and 20% of residents suffer from the condition. Nearly 75% of people with diabetes in the UAE do not have their diabetes under control; a challenge particularly pronounced among children and young adults. It is estimated that 40 to 50% of people with diabetics in the UAE are unaware they are living with the condition. Left unchecked, the spread of diabetes portends devastating social and fiscal consequences for the UAE, including threats to its economic progress and investment stability.

Costs of diabetes in the UAE

Treatment costs for diabetes are estimated as 40% of the UAE’s overall healthcare expenditures. In 2011, the total cost of diabetes to the Emirates was some US$6.6bn, 1.8% of GDP. As diabetes is predicted to escalate in the region, associated costs will rise. On average, medical expenditures for those with diabetes are two to three times higher than for those without the condition. If current trends continue, by 2020, diabetes is projected to cost the UAE some US$8.5bn per year in treatment costs alone. The high level of undiagnosed and poorly controlled diabetes is an added challenge, and threatens to further increase healthcare costs, related complications, and economic development

Urgent need to prevent and manage diabetes in the UAE

These epidemiologic and economic findings suggest an urgent need to increase diabetes prevention and management efforts within the UAE. Although significant investments have been made in state-of-the-art facilities that specialise in diabetes treatment, awareness, research and training, it is generally agreed that a sustained program to further raise awareness, educate and encourage behavioural change is necessary to successfully reduce the burden of diabetes in the UAE.

The UAE is a federation of seven states formed in 1971 by the then Trucial States after independence from Britain. Since then, it has grown from a quiet backwater to one of the Middle East's most important economic centers. Although each state - Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Ajman, Fujairah, Ras al Khaimah, Sharjah and Umm al Qaiwain - maintains a large degree of independence, the UAE is governed by a supreme council of rulers, which is comprised of the seven emirs, who appoint the prime minister and the cabinet.
Since the early 1960s, when Abu Dhabi became the first of the emirates to begin exporting oil, the country's society and economy have been transformed, and the UAE has achieved remarkable economic growth. Its oil industry not only created vast wealth, but also attracted a large influx of foreign workers. Today, the population of the UAE is some 9.4 million, of which over 75% are expatriates. In recent years, the UAE has tried to reduce its dependency on oil exports by diversifying its economy. Recently, annual growth has slowed due to the impact of lower oil prices: 2015 GDP is estimated to be US$644bn.

What do people with diabetes want?

Understanding the myths and realities about what people really want from diabetes education is vital to capturing its value. A 2014 London-based study concluded that there is a significant unmet need for premium, trusted and convenient video educational material to help people prevent and manage their diabetes remotely: see: How GPs can improve diabetes outcomes and reduce costs.

A 2014 McKinsey & Co survey on patients opinions of digital healthcare services support these findings, and found that: (i) 75% of patients want quality digital healthcare services that meets their needs, (ii) people want better access and increased efficiency from healthcare systems, and (iii) the over 50s want digital healthcare services as much as younger counterparts.

A faster, convenient and better pathway of care

The UAE might consider complementing its excellent diabetes care programs with a new and innovative pathway of care for diabetes pioneered by Dr Seth Rankin, co-chair of a London NHS Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG). The pathway employs behavioral techniques, which have been used successfully by the Obama Administration in the US and Prime Minister David Cameron in the UK to ‘nudge’ people to make better choices for themselves and enhance public policy. See: Behavioral Science provides the key to reducing diabetes

Direct and personal information

The new pathway of diabetes care is fast, convenient and better than previous ones, and ensures that people living with diabetes are always part of a doctor-patient network, which increases the variety; velocity, volume and value of educational information patients can receive and want. At the heart of the new pathway is a content library of unique, broadcastable videos, which address patients’ FAQs about the prevention, presentation, diagnosis, and management of prediabetes and T2DM.

Each video is between 60 and 80 seconds in duration, which is the average attention span of people seeking video healthcare information. The pathway makes it easy for health professionals to cluster and send videos, accompanied by personal messages, directly to peoples’ mobiles. These provide Individuals with rapid and efficient answers to their questions about preventing diabetes, managing prediabetes, and T2DM. Dr Seth Rankin describes some of the thinking the pathway is predicated upon:

(click on the image to play the video)

“The new pathway of diabetes care which we have developed could: (i) enhance the connectivity between health professionals and the citizens and residents of the UAE, (ii) increase knowledge and awareness of T2DM, and its personal, fiscal and societal effects, (iii) encourage self-management of the condition, (iv) slow the onset of complications, and (v) reduce the overall burden of diabetes in the UAE,” says Rankin.

Takeaways

The UAE is ideally suited for such a pathway because with 78% smartphone penetration, UAE has one of the highest smartphone penetration rates in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. In fact, 81% of mobile owners age 16-34 now own smartphones, and penetration is rising steadily among other age groups as well, which is a result of a strong economy, a growing middle class, surging consumer confidence in technology, and increasing domestic consumption.