T1 Tenor

For the past four years I've been invited by Abbott to a conference bringing together people with diabetes from across Europe to discuss various topics.  The first year I was meant to attend, it was my 'man v horse' year (the horse won!), so was unable to attend and then the pandemic hit so two further dX's were held virtually.  I was fortunate to be asked to present at last year's session.  This year's event was back in-person and held in Barcelona, coinciding with the latter part of the ATTD conference.   At this point, I must make it very clear - Abbott invited me to the 2022 European Diabetes Exchange forum (dX), that took place in Barcelona.  I attended this two-day event to connect and interact with inspirational and influential people in the diabetes community.  Abbott paid for my ticket and accommodation. #InvitedbyAbbott.  This is formal and it needs to be - I have not been required to do anything by Abbott as a result of my attendance and I hope that m

Click here for Newsletter (pdf)  

In my time as Production Manager of a newspaper printing site, now stretching back more than fifteen years, I have indeed called, or more precisely phoned people to exclaim "STOP THE PRESS" !  However, I am now faced with a metaphorical stop the press situation.  Our site in Birmingham has been placed into consultation for closure alongside our Luton press site.  Around 150 jobs are at risk, including my own.  The question is regularly voiced: " Are you alright ?"  It's not a question I know how to answer two days after I was given the news.  I tend to say that I am, but I don't really know to what extent I am alright.  Is there are measure of alrightness?!   For me, this enforced situation isn't a total surprise although it was only one of a few scenarios which I believed may happen.  Additionally, I had been considering the future and making plans for a long time, but not actually doing something about it!  As I'm in my mid-40's I knew that ne

Having missed the preceding event in 2019 (in Lisbon) through my man meets horse moment, I was greatly looking forward to ‘attending’ this year’s event, albeit from my spare room rather than the rather more appealing Portuguese capital…but at least the quality of tea on offer was top-notch! Each year since 2015, Abbott have run an event for bloggers and influencers (and me!) bringing together representatives from all over Europe.   This year there were over forty representatives from fifteen European countries, including eight people from the UK.   The programme was split over Friday evening and Saturday morning with a variety of speakers and discussion sessions.   The sessions were run on the Remo platform ( https://remo.co/ ), an application I didn’t know of previously, but certainly something that has great potential.   I’ll go through its functionality at the end of my review. At this point I need to stress that I haven’t been asked to blog about this event and I have not recei

Happy New Year!  Hope you had a great festive period. Language There have been so many discussions about language over the past years and rightly so.   I don’t tend to contribute to these discussions as I can see both sides of the argument and I don’t think the 280 character limit of Twitter enables a rational discussion on this topic to be undertaken.   I hope that this blog post may help to provoke some sensible discussion.   There are a few areas I think worth exploring. Audience I think this is key to any discussions about language and diabetes.   What is acceptable to say in one forum could very well be unacceptable in another.   What is acceptable for someone with scant knowledge of or contact with diabetes, may certainly not be acceptable to someone that is in regular contact with diabetes (or dare I say it with diabetics!).   The key is not to stifle discussion.   I think that the current situation where any perceived deviation from the textbook way of talking about

April 2019 - Libre prescriptions dispensed in Primary Care in England Rank CCG Prescriptions T1s %T1 1 Eastern Cheshire CCG 382 885 43.2% 2 Southport and Formby CCG 199 560 35.5% 3 South Lincolnshire CCG 236 675 35.0% 4 Rushcliffe CCG 172 510 33.7% 5 Isle of Wight CCG 249 830 30.0% 6 Nottingham West CCG 128 435 29.4% 7 Wigan Borough CCG 415 1,460 28.4% 8 Nene CCG 833 2,965 28.1% 9 Trafford CCG 267 980 27.2% 10 Richmond CCG 173 675 25.6% 11 Corby CCG 82 320 25.6% 12 High Weald Lewes Havens CCG 179 740 24.2% 13 North West Surrey CCG 326 1,405 23.2% 14 Southampton CCG 275 1,190 23.1% 15 Guildford and Waverley CCG 204 900 22.7% 16 Nottingham North & East CCG 172 760 22.6%