Diabetes Early Warning System

There are an estimated 5 million people living with diabetes in the UK, with diabetes spending accounting for 10% of the entire NHS budget.

Studies show that proactive completion of eight core care processes for diabetes reduces mortality, improves quality of life and reduces adverse outcomes, yet care process completion varies significantly between ICSs and GP practices.

Arden & GEM’s Advanced Analytics Unit has worked alongside clinicians to develop a near real-time system which identifies people living with diabetes who have unmet need and are at potential risk of adverse outcomes. The dashboard is populated by linking data from different sources covering events for diabetes patients over a three year period.

A summary view can be filtered at different levels, including PCN and practice, to show diabetes prevalence and recent diagnosis figures. This insight supports referrals to structured education programmes as well as identifying gaps in care. Summary and benchmarking views are also available to policymakers to provide a holistic picture of diabetes care across an ICS.

By enabling clinicians to easily identify patients who may benefit from immediate clinical attention and proactively reviewing their condition management and medications, we can reduce potential hospital admissions, avoid health complications and improve quality of life.

We can tailor and implement the Diabetes Early Warning System for other ICSs by:

• Working with stakeholders to understand the needs of local patients living with diabetes
• Providing detailed wireframes as part of an iterative and agile development approach with the client
• Data engineering and wrangling necessary to develop the dashboard
• Deploying a fully developed and tested dashboard onto the preferred platform
• User training and supporting documentation to optimise use.