New free prescribing tool for diabetes management

Healthcare professionals working with type 2 diabetes patients now have a new decision support tool that will help them manage and better prescribe treatments for the metabolic condition. The computerised device, which was developed by scientists at Keele University, will help them implement National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) guidelines for the management of diabetes for adults in primary care .
The device allows healthcare experts to offer personalised recommendations on prescriptions based on patient profiles and treatment algorithms involving NICE guidance .
It uses a diabetes dashboard design to support the consultation process, which is updated automatically. The practitioner is able to ask a range of questions, from which the tool creates an individual patient profile, before providing a suitable, patient-tailored treatment recommendation.
In addition, the dashboard offers details of the reasons for each recommendatio, as well as supporting references and related NICE guidance. It can also inform on common side effects of treatment and factors such as drug costs .
Stephen Chapma, a professor at Keele University, commented “With both recent NICE guidance and the growing number of anti-diabetes agents at our disposal, we anticipate that this intuitive tool will easily guide the prescriber through what may otherwise be an ever more complex evidence base .”