Novo Nordisk And King's Health Partners Launch i3-Diabetes
Danish company Novo Nordisk and King’s Health Partners Academic Health Sciences Centre have launched a new initiative to improve diabetes care. The i3-diabetes program will be a five-year collaboration to address current challenges to patients with diabetes.
i3-diabetes is speculated to be the first alliance of its kind between a pharmaceutical firm and the Academic Health Science Centre. The program will reflect the changing roles of both specialist and tertiary diabetes care, especially in the UK. The program will have a local focus in south London, but will serve as an example to health systems worldwide.
Novo Nordisk Vice President in the UK and Ireland Peter Meeus said, “Considering the current economic pressures around the globe, the rising incidence of diabetes is as much of a challenge to the NHS as it is to health systems elsewhere. The i3-diabetes programme will offer an opportunity for all to learn how to drive improvements in outcomes without the usual concurrent increases in cost. This is a significant public-private initiative that will drive innovations in diabetes care, research and education.”
i3-diabetes will take two new approaches to diabetes patient care. The first, Care Coordination, will center on improving care coordination between specialists to limit multiple intervention and better support diabetes patients with complex needs. The second, Risk Stratification, will focus on developing a holistic system to suit patients’ needs as a whole.
Professor of Diabetic Medicine at King's College London and Leader of the Diabetes Clinical Academic Group, King’s Health Partners, Professor Stephanie Amiel said, “Services for people with diabetes are changing, as are the needs of people with diabetes and the tools we have to support them. We need to evolve our specialist diabetes services to improve how people with diabetes access them and benefit from them. Our preliminary investigative work in this project has identified particular areas where we can improve diabetes care in urban population. It is our ambition to co-create a new, world-class model of patient-centred, specialist diabetes care that will meet the changing needs of the people with diabetes we serve at a time of widespread financial austerity and beyond.”
King’s Health Partners is a group of London hospitals including King's College Hospital and South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trusts, King's College London and Guy's and St Thomas'.