Up to 300 patients in England will test a new insulin pen accessory called InsulCheck Connect to help diabetes management.
Innovation Zed, an Irish medtech company, has announced that it is working with the NHS in South Yorkshire and Bassetlaw, England.
The collaboration sees the company’s insulin pen accessory used with diabetes patients as part of a national NHS Test Bed programme exploring new models of care.
InsulCheck Connect, a snap-on accessory for disposable insulin pen users, automatically collects and records pen usage and behaviour data on the go.
The South Yorkshire and Bassetlaw Perfect Patient Pathway Test Bed is one of seven national Test Bed programmes in England, funded by NHS England to look at new ways of delivering care for patients by working with technology partners.
The InsulCheck Connect device is being offered to diabetic patients at the Northern General Hospital, Sheffield as part of a programme designed to better support them to manage their condition. It is hoped the programme will involve up to 300 diabetes patients in total.
The expectation is that the data collected by InsulCheck Connect, when merged with other data such as sugar level readings, and as part of a new package of support for diabetic patients, will enable them and their medical professionals to improve the management of the condition and generate better health outcomes.
Once the new care models that are being looked at through the test bed programme are evaluated, any models and technology that are seen as successfully supporting patients to improve their care could be made available for other parts of the UK to adopt and adapt to the particular needs of their local populations.
Innovation Zed, headquartered at NovaUCD, the Centre for New Ventures and Entrepreneurs at University College Dublin (UCD), was co-founded in 2009 by John Hughes and William Cirillo.
John Hughes, CEO, Innovation Zed, himself an insulin user, said, “I am delighted to have InsulCheck Connect incorporated in the Perfect Patient Pathway Test Bed programme in South Yorkshire and Bassetlaw.”
He added: “Our research with insulin pen users highlights that, as with other conditions, injection compliance is significantly below what is prescribed. We firmly believe that this work will demonstrate that our insulin pen accessory can greatly improve injection compliance and generate better health outcomes for people with diabetes.”
Liz Howarth, South Yorkshire and Bassetlaw perfect patient pathway test bed programme director said: “The Test Bed programme is in place to see whether NHS patients can benefit from using new ways of delivering care, combined with new technologies. It's very early days but we are looking forward to working with our partners, patients and the evaluation team to assess the impact of this particular project.”
InsulCheck Connect is the second in a family of connected products from Innovation Zed. It joins the company’s InsulCheck Classic accessory and is the direct result of a four-year research and development project in University College Dublin, Sweden and Taiwan.
Hughes concluded: “We have already had significant interest in this family of low-cost, insulin pen add-on from private and national health insurance organisations globally as they seek to improve patient outcomes.”
