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Diabetes: Medical Equipment

Question for Department of Health and Social Care

UIN 13904, tabled on 16 February 2024

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many and what proportion of patients with type 1 diabetes use real time continuous glucose monitoring to manage their diabetes.

Answered on

21 February 2024

Standard care for type 1 diabetes involves regularly measuring blood glucose levels by self-monitoring, blood testing, or by using a continuous glucose monitor, real-time or intermittently scanned.

The NHS Long Term Plan committed that 20% of people with type 1 diabetes would benefit from life changing flash glucose monitors. Data to quarter three of 2022/23 shows that 73% of people with type 1 diabetes were prescribed flash glucose monitoring, against the 20% target. As a result of the recent National Institute for Health and Care Excellence guidance that also recommended that insulin dependent patients with type 2 diabetes should benefit from flash or continuous glucose monitoring devices, we are now starting to see a growth in prescribing within the type 2 diabetes patient group.