Diabetes: Medical Equipment

(asked on 22nd November 2023) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether she plans to (a) involve patients with and (b) raise awareness of the (i) potential merits and (ii) availability of hybrid closed loop technology.


Answered by
Andrew Stephenson Portrait
Andrew Stephenson
Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
This question was answered on 28th November 2023

The National Institute of Health and Care Excellence (NICE) has published their draft guidance on hybrid closed loop (HCL) technology for managing blood glucose levels in type 1 diabetes.

HCL technology represents a step change in care for patients living with type one diabetes, which is why NICE has agreed a five-year roll out of this technology with NHS England. This is to ensure the National Health Service has the staff training and patient support in place to safely roll out this new technology.

Access to medical devices should be determined by clinical need. It is our priority to ensure that all patients have access to the most innovative treatment options, wherever they live in the country.

Integrated care boards (ICBs) are responsible for developing a plan for meeting the health needs of their population, managing the NHS budget, and arranging for the provision of health services in the integrated care systems.

For HCL, NHS England will make clinicians aware of priority patients to help ensure equality of access and will keep this under review as it rolled out expands to other groups over the implementation period. NHS England will engage with patient representative groups, ICB leads, trust clinical leads working within children, young people and adult services, and professional bodies as part of the implementation strategy’s development.

Reticulating Splines