Software to calculate cardiovascular risk for diabetics

The University of Oxford is planning to release software that calculates cardiovascular risk for patients with Type 2 diabetes based on data from its UK Prospective Diabetes Study.

The UK Prospective Study Risk Engine, developed by the Diabetes Trials Unit at the university, will supersede the existing Risk Engine, which currently only calculates the likelihood of coronary heart disease.

Dr Richard Stevens, senior lecturer in the department, told E-Health Insider Primary Care that the need for the system was clear: "Although the existing cardiovascular risk calculators work well, it was long suspected that they wouldn’t work well in people with diabetes. We wanted to provide something reliable."

Further studies undertaken by the department showed that existing software that calculates cardiovascular risk in the general patient population did indeed tend to underestimate it in patients with Type 2 diabetes.

Dr Stevens added: "The impact on care is pretty clear. If you are using risk calculators then you are going to overlook risk factors in people who need care."

The system, which will be online later in the year after it has been scientifically trialled and peer-reviewed, will be free to download and use for GPs.

The new improved software will look at cardiovascular risk in general, rather than simply coronary heath disease, therefore following clinical guidelines more closely. The system is also better optimised for patients who have had diabetes for a longer time.

Creating software that aids clinicians to care for those with type 2 diabetes is part of the main work carried out by The Diabetes Trials Unit. Other systems available from the unit include an outcomes model that estimates the long-term "burden of disease" for groups of people with Type 2 diabetes, which can help health organisations plan services.

The UK Prospective Diabetes Study began in 1977, and involved over 5,000 patients across England, Scotland and Northern Ireland, and aimed to monitor over a long period of time how effective blood glucose and blood pressure control was at reducing complications caused by Type 2 diabetes.

The existing version of the software can be downloaded from the Diabetes Trials Unit website.