An ‘artificial pancreas’ designed to revolutionise the life of people with Type 1 diabetes will be provided by the NHS, 100 years after the discovery of insulin, health service chief executive Sir Simon Stevens announced.
Upto 1,000 patients will benefit from a pilot of the innovative ‘closed loop technology’, which continually monitors blood glucose and automatically adjusts the amount of insulin given through a pump. It can eliminate finger prick tests and prevent life-threatening hypoglycaemic attacks. This means the NHS is going above and beyond its Long Term Plan goal on non-invasive glucose monitoring, with two in five people with Type 1 diabetes already now benefiting from this technology.
Professor Partha Kar, NHS national speciality advisor for diabetes, said: “One hundred years after the discovery of insulin, the ‘artificial pancreas’ is a potentially revolutionary development in the treatment of diabetes. The NHS has long been at the forefront of clinical advances in care for major diseases, including diabetes, which have allowed patients to live longer and healthier lives. We have already outperformed the goals in the NHS Long Term Plan for better diabetes care, and this new technology is an extension of the fantastic work achieved by the NHS, third sector and industry partners who are working together to improve the lives of patients.”
