Endocrine Abstracts

Introduction: DigiBete is a patient support app with educational and peer support video vignettes, translated into several languages and accessible to those with low literacy. It can be personalised by diabetes teams for patient communication. The app is widely used in England and Wales. In 2021, the Scottish Government funded DigiBete app licenses for all T1D families in Scotland for a 12-month pilot.

Methods: A primary health board led the pilot, establishing template documents for information governance (IG) approval, and launching in November 2022. A Digibete champions network, including representatives from secondary boards, was established. IG templates and implementation approaches were shared through regular online meetings. An evaluation subgroup used “contribution analysis” to assess the app’s impact. Evaluation included collation of app usage statistics, user feedback through online questionnaires, healthcare professional (HCP) questionnaires, and structured interviews with stakeholders from different health boards. The time HCPs spent creating and maintaining local online resources was also modelled and translated into NHS costs.

Results: • DigiBete is now used in 12 of 14 Scottish health boards, with 1,075 families and 98 HCPs registered.

• Each user views an average of four videos, with “sick day rules” being the most popular.

• 20 families responded to the questionnaire, 19 of whom appreciated having resources available on their phone.

• 22 HCPs responded, 18 of whom liked having standardised Scotland-wide resources, and all 22 wanted to continue using the app.

• The 9 Scottish boards using alternative digital resources spent approx £62,043 in the first year and £41,628 annually to maintain them, with 5 boards not having any access to these. The cost of DigiBete for the whole Scottish community is less than 50% of this.

Conclusions: Central funding provides an efficient, unified approach for Scotland. The positive evaluation, especially regarding cost savings, secured an additional two years of funding for continued app roll-out, with a future focus on the young adult population. DigiBete registration status is now included in SCI diabetes, our national shared electronic patient record. This will allow future evaluation to focus on app user demographics and whether DigiBete use has any impact on clinical outcomes.