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Key people

Postgraduate students

  • Venus Cahusac de Caux PhD candidate
    Investigating glycaemic and psychosocial outcomes in young people with Type 1 Diabetes using an Automated Insulin Delivery System
  • Tharaka Gayaththri Athukorala PhD candidate
    Investigating the effects of a remote care model in accelerating care, capacity and equity in AID system for New Zealanders with Type 1 Diabetes
  • Zhenlin Li PhD candidate
    My research focuses on the use of diabetes technologies and factors affecting glycaemic control in children and young people with diabetes.

Current studies

Automated insulin delivery to improve current care for Māori and Pacific peoples living with type 1 diabetes: The AID-IMPACT trial

Type 1 diabetes (T1D) is one of the most common chronic diseases diagnosed in childhood. T1D cannot be cured; therefore, people with diabetes must incur considerable burden intensively managing their diabetes levels for the rest of their lives.

We have shown that independent of socioeconomic status, Māori and Pacific peoples with T1D have inequitable glycaemic outcomes which are predictive of long-term complications. Artificial pancreas systems, which use automation by combining insulin pumps, continuous glucose monitoring, and computer-based glucose control algorithms, may be the answer. These systems can considerably improve glucose control while at the same time having potential to reduce disease burden.

While these advanced diabetes technologies have great potential to help and despite these systems being commercially available in Aotearoa, Māori and Pacific peoples have less access to this technology due to a variety of reasons, which systematically disadvantage Māori and Pacific peoples.

Our goal is to expedite translation of AID technology to prioritise Māori and Pacific peoples with T1D.

Diabetes Technology - New model of care for faster and more equitable access

Automated insulin delivery (AID) systems are the gold standard for managing glucose levels in people with T1D. Despite this evidence, in Aotearoa NZ, and worldwide, access to these technologies is slow and is not equitable.

With PHARMAC having recently widened access to these systems, it is expected the health system will not meet demand as the demand to automate will outstrip the supply. An estimated 13,000 people with T1D are expected to seek AID over 12 months, and only about 500 are trained onto AID each year using current models of care. We hypothesise that if things do not change, this new PHARMAC funding will lead to even greater inequity of access based on ethnicity, location (rural vs urban), and socio-economic status.

We propose a “Hub Model” for patients’ transition to AID and on-going support and hypothesise that this Hub Model is a safe and cost-effective approach to increase NZ wide access to AID and redress current inequities, by giving those with the highest need first rather than last access to life changing technology.

Collaborations

The team has active collaborations with many other departments at Otago, including Anatomy, Human Nutrition, Public Health (Dunedin), Paediatrics and Child Health (Christchurch and Wellington), Psychology, the Department of Bioethics and the School of Pharmacy and Pharmacology.

Outside of the University, we have collaborations both nationally and internationally. These include:

Key funders

  • Cure Kids
  • Fisher and Paykel
  • Freemasons New Zealand
  • HCO Charitable Trust
  • Health Research Council (HRC)
  • Healthy Eating Healthy Activity (HEHA)
  • Lions Clubs New Zealand
  • Lotteries Research
  • National Institute of Health (NIH) (USA)
  • Otago Medical Research Foundation (OMRF)
  • Various Pharmaceutical Industry funded trials
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