Integrated approaches should empower people living with diabetes to take care of their own management, a health expert told EURACTIV.
Integrated approaches in healthcare aim to increase collaboration between different stakeholders and healthcare providers to ensure better holistic patient care.
Such an approach can be particularly valuable for people with diabetes, as they often deal with a range of specialists and healthcare workers, from cardiologists and family doctors to nurses and ophthalmologists.
According to Chantal Mathieu, Professor of Medicine at the University of KU Leuven and Chair of the European Diabetes Forum (EUDF), it is crucial to organize the care pathway in a way that puts the person with diabetes at the centre.
“Sometimes cardiologists say ‘do A’ while nurses say ‘do B’ – and that’s very confusing for the person living with diabetes,” she told EURACTIV.
The pandemic has shown the benefits of a concerted approach as opposed to working in individual departments. “Integrated care means that the person with diabetes controls everything that happens to them,” she explained.
Along with new technologies and data collection, integrated care was one of the three political ones recommendationsdeveloped by the EUDF following a year-long project involving more than 45 professionals.
“We chose these three main working points before the pandemic because we thought they would cover the most important needs, and the real world situation confirmed that,” she said.
For example, the pandemic has shown how important data and registers are. In the first year of the pandemic, “we acted blindly and probably did the wrong thing at times,” Mathieu said, attributing this to the lack of available information about the virus.
“If you have data on who has diabetes — and you can also put that information into practice operations — you can make policy decisions and determine how many resources are needed,” she added.
So that integrated care works
Education and information can also play a role in introducing the concept of integrated care as the medical and paramedical schools train young doctors, nurses and nutritionists of the future.
Some schools have already incorporated integrated care into the curriculum, said Mathieu, citing the example of her own university, KU Leuven.
In the professional environment, incentive systems could contribute to better integration in healthcare, she explained. Belgium, for example, offers a bonus of 80 euros per year to bring family doctors and endocrinologists together.
Another key element in implementing this approach, Mathieu says, is to put people with diabetes at the forefront of discussions about care and to take their suggestions into account.
Digital tools have helped diabetics have more freedom over the past 10 years with the explosion of new technologies, such as sensors for continuous measurement of blood sugar levels or insulin pumps.
People with type 1 diabetes can also use apps and digital platforms to make decisions about their treatment or simply to get help with a healthy lifestyle.
“Perhaps the easiest thing is to convince people living with the disease of the importance of new technologies. Attracting the political decision-makers, but also the healthcare professionals, is not that easy,” says Mathieu.
“Healthier together” and beyond
The European Commission recently launched an initiative, Healthier Together, to help Member States reduce the burden of NCDs in the EU.
The initiative, funded with €156 million from the EU4Health work program 2022, covers diabetes and other noncommunicable diseases such as cardiovascular disease, cancer and chronic respiratory diseases.
“We are very proud that the initiative specifically addresses diabetes. We don’t want diabetes to be seen only as a risk factor for cardiovascular disease: diabetes itself is a serious disease,” she said.
As a disease affecting more than 60 million people in Europe, it deserves proper attention, specifically tailored to the needs of people with diabetes, she added.
Aside from the new impetus surrounding NCDs, EU policymakers seem to be changing their approach to health – there is talk of giving Brussels more powers in this area.
“I hope that the next generation sees that Europe has a bigger, leading role in organizing healthcare and has a vision of where things should go,” Mathieu concludes.
[Bearbeitet von Nathalie Weatherald/Zoran Radosavljevic]