Highlights:
- Connects patients in need of regular blood glucose self-monitoring with their clinicians
- Developed in response to success of GDm-Health for women with diabetes in pregnancy and increasing demand from clinicians for new digital technologies and Sensyne Health products, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic
- Working collaboratively with three NHS Trusts to deploy DBm-Health in initial UK launch
- US commercial launch planned for later in the current financial year
DBm-Health is being developed in response to increasing demand from clinicians to be able to care for and advise their patients with diabetes remotely, i.e. without the need for face-to-face consultation. In the UK diabetes currently costs the NHS around £9.8 billion a year. [1] In the US the total cost of diagnosed diabetes is $327 billion [2] with medical costs for people with diabetes running at twice the level of people that do not have the disease. [3]
DBm-Health follows the Company’s highly successful, award-winning GDm-Health™ product for the management of diabetes in pregnancy. Sensyne Health has received direct requests during the pandemic from a number of NHS Trusts to provide a software application like GDm-Health that may be used for people required to regularly self-monitor their blood glucose given the rapidly increasing need for remote monitoring.
GDm-Health has now achieved a market share of 47% across the National Health Service in England and is currently undergoing clinical evaluation by Jefferson Health in the United States. As a consequence of the success of GDm-Health and in response to clear clinical demand, the Company has accelerated its plans to develop DBm-Health for the wider diabetic community.
The first clinical use of DBm-Health will be undertaken by three NHS Trusts over the coming months to evaluate the health-economic and operational benefits of DBm-Health. The Company intends to launch DBm-Health in the United States towards the end of the current financial year.
About Diabetes and COVID-19
The launch of DBm-Health comes at a time of increasing hospital admissions for acute diabetes management and emerging evidence suggesting COVID-19 may trigger the onset of diabetes in healthy people and cause poor control for existing diabetes sufferers. [4] In addition, the NHS has moved rapidly to offer remote consultations, particularly for those with co-morbidities such as diabetes which puts a person at particular risk of severe COVID infection. Therefore, demand for diabetes remote monitoring has risen rapidly over the past few months and remote monitoring of diabetes is expected to remain the main method of care in the future.
About Diabetes
In the UK 3.9 million are currently living with a diagnosis of diabetes (90% with type 2). In addition, there are almost a million people currently living with undiagnosed type 2 diabetes who do not know they have the condition because they are yet to be diagnosed, bringing the total number to more than 4.8 million or 7% of the UK population. By 2025 diabetes in the UK is expected to rise 10% to affect 5.3 million people. [5]
In the US more than 34.2 million people have diabetes, representing approximately 10% of the population. Of these, 7.3% are undiagnosed. 1.5 million Americans are diagnosed with diabetes every year. In 2015, 88 million Americans age 18 and older had pre-diabetes. [6]
Lord (Paul) Drayson PhD, CEO of Sensyne Health, said:
“I am very proud of the speed at which the Sensyne team has responded to this clinical need and the clear demonstration of the scalability of the platform we have built at Sensyne. We are acutely aware of the concerns of diabetic patients and the people that care for them, and of the additional burden that COVID-19 has brought to the management of this complex and potentially life-threatening condition. Rapid uptake of DBm-Health in the UK has the potential to make a significant difference to diabetes care in the NHS and provides a strong foundation to launch DBm-Health in the USA later this financial year.”
Dr Lucy Mackillop , Chief Medical Officer of Sensyne Health plc and consultant obstetric physician at Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and Honorary Senior Clinical Lecturer, Nuffield Department of Women's and Reproductive Health, University of Oxford, said:
“We are responding to the urgent need of NHS Trusts for new digital technologies to optimally care for patients with diabetes. DBm-Health will help ensure the highest quality information is securely available to clinicians from patients who are particularly vulnerable to COVID-19 and are advised to stay at home during the pandemic. We are responding to an urgent clinical need utilising our prior track record with the award-winning remote monitoring system GDm-Health.”
- Diabetes UK, ‘The Cost of Diabetes’ https://www.diabetes.org.uk/resources-s3/2017-11/diabetes%20uk%20cost%20of%20diabetes%20report.pdf
- American Diabetes Association, 2017
- US Department of Health and Human Services, Centres for Disease Control and Prevention
- New-Onset Diabetes in Covid-19, New England Journal of Medicine, Letters, 12 June 2020 https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2018688
- Diabetes UK, 10 February 2020 ‘Number of people with diabetes reaches 4.8million’
- American Diabetes Association, 2018
