Breathing life into Australian diabetes clinical guidelines

Living guidelines that incorporate new evidence as it becomes available have the potential to overcome some of the limitations inherent in static guidelines

Diabetes is a complex chronic condition that affects about 1.7 million Australians and represents an estimated $15 billion per annum in direct and indirect costs to the Australian economy.1 Almost $215 million of subsidies were delivered during the 2015–16 financial year to the 1.32 million registrants of the National Diabetes Services Scheme, an Australian Government initiative that provides support to Australians living with diabetes. In 2019, an additional $100 million was announced for funding the Continuous Glucose Monitoring Initiative, which provides fully subsidised continuous glucose monitoring products to patients with diabetes who meet certain criteria.2 In 2017, almost 1.2 million hospitalisations and 11% of all deaths in Australia listed diabetes as the principal or associated cause.3