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The Diabetes Modernisation Initiative (DMI) has been working since 2010 to establish new approaches to the organisation and delivery of diabetes care. More than three million people across the UK have diabetes, yet diabetes care has suffered from a lack of focus and joined-up working. The DMI’s goals are amibitious, and include:

• ; people live with their condition every day of the year and can be empowered to manage it themselves
• Detecting more people who have diabetes
• Reduced variation in primary care
• Improved control of blood sugar levels, cholesterol and blood pressure
• Reduced emergency hospital admissions

The DMI has worked across traditional boundaries in the health service to bring about system wide change, engaging NHS partners across Lambeth and Southwark. It brought clinical champions, health service staff and other professionals together with people living with diabetes themselves, to transform and improve services.

Recognising the expertise of people with long term conditions, the DMI put patient engagement at the heart of its approach, and established a thriving patient forum. Alongside this, the experience of GPs, consultants, nurses and other clinicians has been harnessed through a clinical reference group. Both the patient forum and the clinical reference group have been part of the formal reporting structure of the programme.

The DMI was funded by the , which committed £4.5m of funding over three years as part of their wider modernisation and improvement programme.