Adults living in the Western Sydney health district have 1.5 greater chance of having type -2 diabetes compared with the Sydney average. The Western Sydney Diabetes (WSD) initiative is building a program with numerous partners in all sectors to ‘beat diabetes together’ and take the ‘heat out of our hotspot’. Building and deploying the ‘Western Sydney Diabetes Care Plan Connect’ a diabetes self-management App with Western Sydney Local Health District (WSLHD), Western Sydney Primary Health Network (WSPHN), Telstra Health, Diabetes NSW, University of Wollongong, University Sydney, George Institute, Australian Diabetes Society, National Association of Diabetes Centres, Sanofi and BD. Diabetes patients are limited in the time they can spend face to face with health professionals. In total this is estimated to be around eight hours per year. Amongst the other benefits this app will assist them to manage their condition effectively for the remaining 364 days of the year.

Patients will the offered sign-up by General Practice and the App will self-populate from the GP desktop care plan. This includes an updated medication list. Patient will interact with devices such as Blood Glucose Monitoring, BP measurement and fitness tracking devices directly, or through blue tooth connections or enter the data manually. Meals and medications will be recorded. This will elicit smart prompts, to advise, educate, congratulate or alert patients to other action. Short educational video clips with a range of multi-disciplinary team educators will be available as well as a library of educational information will be available on the app. Other care features will be added in latter versions. The information will be shared back with providers.  

This development phase will be working closely with a selected number of GPs and their patients with diabetes expanding up to 2,000 patients over 2 years.