David Brill
A new interactive tool to help educate patients about diabetes is due to be unveiled in Asia next year.
The Diabetes Conversations programme provides healthcare professionals with a set of materials designed to engage patients in learning about the disease and making decisions around their treatment.
The packs, which are available free of charge, will be translated into more than 25 different languages and tailored to individual countries in order to make them culturally relevant.
The European version, developed in collaboration with the International Diabetes Federation Europe and sponsored by Eli Lilly and Company, was unveiled at the EASD in September. The Asian and Latin American editions, however, are expected to remain in development until December this year.
“It is increasingly up to GPs and primary care practitioners to educate patients, so having effective tools that they can leverage is becoming more and more important,” said Mr. Peter Gorman, a representative of Healthy Interactions Inc, the US-based company who manufacture Diabetes Conversations.
Healthcare professionals will be able to register for free training in how to use the materials, which include activity cards and table-top conversation maps.
These can then be used in small group sessions of three to 10 patients at a time, typically lasting around 45 minutes to an hour.
A similar version was launched in the US last year in conjunction with the American Diabetes Association. More than 14,000 healthcare professionals have already been trained in using the conversation tool, Gorman said, adding that the programme has been “extremely successful” so far.
“A lot of healthcare professionals recognize that having a Powerpoint presentation or a flip chart up in front of a group isn’t a very engaging way to get patients involved in education. That’s really the selling point of these – do you want to engage the patient and have them own their outcome?” he said.
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