Diabetes Screening & Early Detection
Diabetes is a rapidly accelerating public health crisis demanding immediate policy attention. Early detection of diabetes is important, as timely and adequate diabetes management could prevent or delay complications, comorbidity, poor quality of life and premature death, as such contributing substantially to decreasing the burden of diabetes for individuals, health systems and societies.
Strategic Forums
EUDF established 3 Strategic Forums with experts to generate policy recommendations and ideas for implementation to allow discussions and engage on concrete projects with stakeholders and policy makers both at EU and national level.
EUDF offers specific, achievable policy recommendations in three key areas:
- The use of health data to define, measure and achieve better outcomes;
- Empowering people with diabetes through digital technologies and innovative therapies; and
- Rethinking health systems to focus on primary and integrated care
EUDF policy recommendations
Integrated care is an emergent set of practices that seeks to move away from care that is fragmented, episodic, and service-based, with care that is continuous, coordinated, and outcomes-focused. As the WHO describes it, integrated care is “seamless, smooth, and easy to navigate.”
Diabetes registries, which collect, track, and analyse patient data on parameters ranging from clinical characteristics, risk factor control indicators, diabetes complications, and treatments, can become an essential tool for improving the quality of diabetes care and securing better outcomes for people with diabetes when integrated in the diabetes care system.
Digital technologies are driving significant changes in healthcare, offering new solutions to assist in preventing, diagnosing, and treating chronic diseases. Diabetes is ideally suited to benefit from these types of digital tools, given it is a largely a self-managed condition, and especially data-driven.
Strategic Forum: Data & Registries
The use of health data to define, measure and achieve better outcomes.
Support the establishment of a pan-European diabetes data system capable of providing ‘live’ status reports on diabetes care quality and clinical outcomes.
Strategic Forum: Self-care, Technology & Digitalization
Empowering people with diabetes through digital technologies and innovative therapies.
Optimise the use of technology, digital health and innovative treatments to support self care by people with diabetes, to prevent complications and support quality of life.
Strategic Forum: Integrated Care
Rethinking health systems to focus on primary and integrated care.
Support the design of a ‘clinic of the future’ for people with diabetes, fully integrated between primary and secondary care, one stop service for complication screening and treatment.
Meeting the diabetes challenge
Diabetes remains one of the most misunderstood and underestimated of all common medical conditions.
What can be done to address the diabetes challenge?
The EUDF's recommendations pinpoint three areas where – if certain steps are taken – progress is readily within reach: integrated care, registries, and digital technologies.