Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to help ensure that people with diabetes have access to free blood glucose kits.

Integrated care boards (ICBs) are responsible for the planning and commissioning of diabetes care. If an individual patient is eligible or deemed suitable for flash, specifically Freestyle Libre, continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) or hybrid closed loop (HCL) systems, then a decision is required by the patient’s routine care provider in consultation with their patient.

NHS England can confirm over 200,000 eligible people living with diabetes benefit from real-time CGM. However, they are currently unable to differentiate real-time CGM uptake by type 1 and type 2 diabetes populations.

Following National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) recommendations on access to HCL technology last year, the NICE and NHS England agreed on a phased implementation period for HCL over five-years for people with type 1 diabetes. Therefore, people with type 1 diabetes will be transitioning from CGM to HCL during this five year period.

We are developing new reporting systems which are designed to support ICBs to monitor delivery. CGM data for diabetics is now collected as part of the National Diabetes Audit, which suggests that the number of people with type 2 diabetes using CGM is increasing. Metrics that are useful for health systems to monitor access to glucose monitoring will be published later this year.