Dubai, United Arab Emirates, July 23, 2018:  The Dubai Diabetes Centre (DDC), the emirate’s only dedicated multidisciplinary diabetes centre, will undergo expansion services to enhance its capacity and cater to a larger number of patients.

 

The estimated number of people with diabetes in 2015 was 415 million and in 2040, it can reach up to 642 million. In the UAE, it is estimated one in five people are diabetic and another one in five are pre-diabetic.

 

In 2017, the centre treated nearly a thousand new patients. In terms of total patient visits with all the different providers at the centre, including consultant endocrinologists, nurse educators, dietitians, podiatrists, exercise specialists, psychologist, and retinal imaging specialists, the number exceeded 38, 000 visits. 

 

HE Humaid Al Qutami, Director-General of the DHA conducted an inspectional tour of the centre and was provided with a detailed overview of the recent achievements and further expansion plans of the centre.

 

 

Al Qutami highlighted that the Authority aims to provide specialised medical services especially for chronic diseases such as diabetes that have a high prevalence in the region. “Since the start of this centre in 2009, we have come a long way in ensuring that we provide specialised services to people with diabetes under one-roof. We are keen to expand the services of this centre to enhance capacity and provide high-quality multidisciplinary diabetic care to a larger number of patients.”

 

Dr Ahmed Bin Kalban, CEO of Specialised Healthcare Services Sector at the DHA said, “Diabetes in particular is a disease that requires specialised multidisciplinary care. At the centre, we provide international levels of care and have North American trained specialists such as consultant adult and paediatric endocrinologists, along with the team comprising of nurse educators, dieticians, podiatrists, exercise therapists and retinal camera technicians. Continuity of care is an integral part of the Centre and each patient visits the same consultant every time. Due to the continuous addition of patients, the number of existing patients has gone up considerably causing a delay in getting new patient appointments. Expanding existing facilities will allow us to treat a higher number of new patients and help us provide the usual level of care at the same time.”

 

 

The Centre will soon begin an obesity clinic to help patients struggling with obesity with realistic and effective ways to lose weight and to maintain that weight loss as well. 

 

Dr M. Hamed Farooqi, Director of the Dubai Diabetes Centre said, “Managing patients which significant obesity and its underlying complications is a huge challenge. The statistics clearly point out that obesity is one of the major factors contributing to the high prevalence of diabetes in the region. We already have the experts in our centre that will form a dedicated multidisciplinary team to help patients with obesity shed the pounds. This will directly help in improved patient outcomes and better control of diabetes.”

 

The multidisciplinary team will include:

 

Dr Farooqi added that the centre recently completed a proof of concept project for the implementation of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to detect diabetic retinopathy. 

 

He said, “Use of AI in detection of diabetic retinopathy can revolutionize the manner in which we screen patients for retinopathy. It will be cost effective, will provide high-quality care and will lead to better utilization of resources. Ophthalmologists will only need to see retinal images of patients with retinopathy that the system detects as opposed to the current system where they need to screen all patients.”

 

Dr Farooqi said that for a highly prevalent disease like diabetes, the benefits are simply multi-fold. “As per international diabetes standards, we need to have 14 retinal images per diabetic. The estimated number of diagnosed diabetics in the UAE exceeds 1 million. To interpret 14 million images per year, we need more than 50 eye specialists working full-time. Deep learning system (DLS) using artificial intelligence (AI) are capable of identifying diabetic retinopathy and related eye diseases using retinal images with a high degree of accuracy. Thus using AI can not only help provide retinopathy screening for a large number of diabetics but also lead to better utilization of resources and time of ophthalmologists.” 

 

The American Academy of Ophthalmology has recently selected the abstract of this study as a Poster for its Annual Meeting in Chicago in October this year.

 

 

Dr Farooqi added that the Centre is also working on another pilot study, which aims to investigate the effective use of tele-monitoring technology in patients who don’t turn up for follow-up visits and as a result have poor diabetic control. These patients then lead to a significant burden on the health system as an outcome of the resulting complications.

 

Dr Farooqi said, “The primary objective of this study is to investigate the use of tele monitoring devices (such as those for blood glucose, blood pressure, weight, pulse oximetry, pulse and ECG, spirometry and point of care labs etc.) to gather the  relevant data in patients with type 2 diabetes and use mobile-phone applications designed to promote better patient compliance in such patients. 

 

“The other objective is to evaluate the patient electronic health record database of the Centre using AI and DML to identify, if possible, the trends or linkages that would lead to better predictive modeling of those patients that are more likely to be lost to follow-up. Through the use of technology we aim to empower patients and improve patient care,” he added.