- In recent weeks, a center exclusively dedicated to type 1 diabetes has opened in Lyon.
- This establishment is the only one in France to take care of patients, outside the hospital, and to ensure their follow-up.
- The objective is in particular to bring back to care diabetics who have broken with medicine and to improve and simplify the monitoring of patients.
If on paper, it is only a change of address, for patients, it is day and night. In recent weeks, the Diab-eCare center has opened its doors in the Medicina Rockefeller health center in the 8th arrondissement of Lyon. Managed by the Hospices Civils de Lyon, this center is the first in France dedicated to type 1 diabetes to receive patients outside the hospital walls. A novelty intended to improve the management of this pathology, which concerns 10% of people with diabetes and whose incidence has doubled in twenty years in France.
For patients who, due to a pancreatic deficiency secrete little or no insulin, the opening of such a structure dedicated to a single chronic disease is a real step forward. Patients, who usually have to spend between one and five days in hospital to get an insulin pump, no longer need to go to a hospital. No more than for their usual follow-up medical consultations. A few hours at the center are now enough thanks to an exemption obtained from the health authorities.
"It is a positive thing to get out of the hospital and be in town," says one of the patients, who to lower his blood glucose level must be administered daily and for life 'insulin. For most diabetics of this type, the disease occurred during childhood or early adulthood and requires daily monitoring. "It is a chronic pathology that weighs daily," said the endocrinologist and director of the center, Charles Thivolet, concerned that the new care offered in Lyon would make life a little easier for these people.
Bring patients out of therapy to care
For the entire medical team, made up of doctors, nurses, a dietician, a psychologist and a teacher in adapted physical activity, the care outside the walls also gives hope for a gradual return to care. patients lost to follow-up for years. According to HCL, "20% of type 1 diabetics have not consulted specialists in the past five years", thus putting themselves at a higher risk of complications from diabetes.
To bring these patients back on therapeutic break, the team relies on reinforced support for the patient. “We have a multiprofessional team whose expertise is concentrated on a single pathology. Inevitably, this allows for more regular and personalized monitoring of the patient, underlines Professor Charles Thivolet. We organize ourselves for example so that it is the same person who puts on the insulin pump and then ensures the follow-up of the patient ”. This is impossible to organize in current hospital structures where staff move from one pathology to another, from one patient to another, in the various departments.
Cutting-edge technologies for patient monitoring
The opening of a dedicated center should also increase the development of new technologies, tested and then deployed in recent years within HCL, like the artificial pancreas to monitor patients with type 1 diabetes in real time. The start-up Diabnext, which develops and markets a remote monitoring platform and connected tools for simplified monitoring and management of diabetes, is also associated with the center. Again, a plus for diabetics whose daily lives are improving with new technologies.
The creation of this dedicated center should also be accompanied by new research projects including a new cohort of patients, around the artificial pancreas and connected tools such as insulin pens, telemedicine or glycemic variability indicators.
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