Last Friday, I attended Diabetes Ireland’s health professional conference in Dublin as a guest speaker with fellow person with diabetes and DIYAPS user, Tomas Mahony. The purpose of our presentation, “DIY Diabetes Technology: What & Why” was to give a very general overview of what DIY D-Technology is and to share our personal experience of using it and why we chose to take this path.

Disclosure: I received an honorarium from Diabetes Ireland to cover my traveling expenses to attend DICE which was very much appreciated as I had to travel the evening before to attend.

It was a very interesting day and a very different conference to the ones I’m used to. I attended four of the presentations which were all really interesting for me. I was particularly interested in Dr. Parth Narendran’s presentation on Research into Prevention of Type 1 diabetes where he shared some of the interesting research and trials ongoing but this one is the one that Dr. Narendran focused on as it had the most dramatic results.

However one of the HUGE drawbacks of this research is that it’s “focused on those with a first-degree relative with diabetes” and I was blown away by the fact that the number of people with type 1 diabetes who have a direct relative who has type 1 diabetes is as low as 10%

How many people with type 1 diabetes have a direct relative with type 1 diabetes?
10% of people with type 1 diabetes have a direct relative with type 1 diabetes

Slide Credit: Dr Parth Narendran @parthnarendran

I also attended Dr Rosemary Burson’s presentations on “The Role of the Advanced Nurse Practitioner” and “Lessons Learned from Management of Type 2 Diabetes”. Both presentations were excellent and did mention involving people with diabetes as much as possible, using technology more to improve delivery of care, something that our Irish health system is very much dragging its heels on, and a little sideline mention of #LanguageMatters ;-D

I also attended Dr Sharleen O’Reilly’s presentation on “Improving Health After Gestational Diabetes - Where is the Research Up to”. Thankfully, when I stepped out of the room for a couple of minutes and missed some key pieces of information I had the chance to catch up with a friend who shared some notes with me and provided me with statistic:

1 in 8 pregnant women will develop gestational diabetes
1 out of every 2 women who had gestational diabetes will develop type 2 diabetes.

It’s beyond belief that given this stark statistic there is no follow up care after six weeks post partum to ensure that GD has gone and no recommendations for consistent type 2 diabetes screening.

Dr O’Reilly shared what interventions were being trialled/piloted around the world and how her team at UCD developed their intervention called Bump2BabyandMe

This conference had twenty presentations of thirty minutes each, on a wide range of topics, they presenters are from a wide range of health disciplines covering a multitude of areas of diabetes care. Given the broad range of topics and the diversity of the delegates which included: podiatrists, nurses, dietitians and researchers, it’s very difficult to describe this conference. I think it’s also complicated by how many different healthcare groups within the irish health care service are responsible for diabetes care delivery:

General Practice: GPs and Practice Nurses are responsible for care of people with uncomplicated type 2 diabetes
Community Healthcare Organisations (CHOs): Clinical Nurse Specialists Diabetes Integrated Care, Diabetes, Dieticians and Community Podiatrists are all based within CHOs and deliver care in the community
Hospital Groups: are responsible for care of people with complicated type 2 diabetes and all those with type 1 diabetes should be solely managed in secondary care (outpatient consultant clinics).
National Clinical Programme for Diabetes which “aims to influence positive change and improve care for people living with diabetes across the entire spectrum of healthcare delivery”

It’s definitely a challenge to create a diabetes conference for all of these care professionals and one I hope grows.