Almost 10% of the global population has diabetes and rising; 15-17% of all UK hospital (inpatient) beds are occupied by people with diabetes at any time, costing ~£2.5 billion/ year. Significant numbers suffer a deterioration in diabetes care (such as low or high blood glucose events, and preventable foot ulcers) during hospital stays, as a result of poor management, in part due to general hospital staff being poorly trained in diabetes management.
This proposal aims to develop a computer-based (digital) tool to support clinicians in hospitals make better decisions. The tool will identify ‘at risk’ individuals; support triage of patients, and give advice around the correct decisions for foot care and medication changes/ titration. This tool makes use of historical information (data) contained in medical records to find patterns in the data that predict when escalation of treatment or expert input is needed, ahead of time, thus preventing serious health outcomes/ medical emergencies/ reducing hospital stay, preventing ill health and death. This project is a collaboration between MyWay Digital Health (MWDH), a University of Dundee spin-out, NHS staff and academia.
