For many people with type 2 diabetes, blood glucose self-monitoring is an often unnecessary and unpleasant task that confers no benefit at very high and increasing cost, according to John Robson and colleagues from Queen Mary University of London.
They have shown how a local intervention involving IT support and peer feedback was successful in reducing unneeded testing by over 60% in diabetic patients registered with practices in East London either on metformin or on no drug treatment. If these results were applied nationally, unnecessary testing would be avoided in over 100,000 people, at a saving of £30million.
Research: Reduction in self-monitoring of blood glucose in type 2 diabetes: an observational controlled study in east London, John Robson, Hannah Smithers, Tahseen Chowdhury, Philip Bennett-Richards, David Keene, Isabel Dostal, Rohini Mathur, Jack Dunne, Sally Hull, Kambiz Boomla, British Journal of General Practice, DOI: 10.3399/bjgp15X684421, published online 30 March 2015.