Thursday, June 14, 2007

Diabetes solutions that care


Philips research organised a symposium on diabetes care

On June 14 I attended and presented at a symposium on diabetes care organised by Philips Research on the ‘high tech campus’ in Eindhoven: “Diabetes solutions that care”. The symposium was indeed mostly focussed on diabetes care with presentations on blood glucose monitoring and management, and new antidiabetic drugs. Different speakers expressed that there may be business in diabetes care, more than in prevention. For health insurance companies, for example, there is no incentive to aim at primary prevention of diabetes. However at the start of the day, Wim Wientjes great introductory presentation also addressed the importance of prevention and lifestyle changes. Wientjes was president of the Dutch Diabetes Federation, and is vice president of the International Diabetes Federation. Other presenters came from Germany, UK, and the Netherlands. Mine was the final presentation of the day. A bit strange that the importance of prevention gets most attention at the end… But it was an interesting day, not in the least because of the demonstrations of physical activity monitoring systems Philips is working on and that would be great as an objective basis for tailored health behaviour change feedback.

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