Stoke Heath prison health project helping diabetic prisoners is ‘going national’
A diabetes monitoring scheme at a Shropshire prison is ‘going national’, a meeting heard this week.
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Prisoners with diabetes at Stoke Heath, near Market Drayton, are being given smart sensors which warn them if their blood sugar levels change dramatically.
A meeting of the Shropshire Community Health NHS Trust (ShropCom) board heard that the scheme has proven so successful that it is in the process of “going national, across the country".
Members of the ShropCom team who work at the prison presented their scheme at a meeting in public of the board in Ludlow on Thursday (February 6).
The meeting was told that the most challenging part of the project was getting the charging cables approved because of the risk that they may be used as ligatures.
The Libra monitoring system being used also normally connects to mobile phones. But because prisoners cannot have mobile phones they sourced small handheld devices which can receive regularly updated data.
Board members were told that of the 750 prisoners at Stoke Heath around a dozen use the system at any one time and it has changed lives.
If blood sugar levels change dramatically from the normal and become life threatening, the system can wake prisoners up in their cells and they can take action. In one case a very high and dangerous reading of 122 was reduced to 61.
The meeting at Ludlow Mascall Centre was told that the idea has the potential to help prisoners ‘extend their lives’. It can also reduce the need for prisoners to be taken to hospital.
Patricia Davies, Shropcom’s chief executive, said diabetes is a “silent killer” and the scheme is helping “people who are living chaotic lives.”
Members of the board also heard from a Shropcom pharmacist at Stoke Heath, where the team is using medicines vending machines to enable prisoners to get their prescription drugs.
Prisoners are risk-assessed before they can get their medicines from the machines and have to use their fingerprints to access the drugs.
The board was told that medicine-taking compliance has increased from 60 per cent to 95 per cent. At the same time it is assisting the pharmacists with stock control because the machines can work out when re-stocking is necessary.
Andrew Morgan, chair in common at Shropcom, said the work of the team at Stoke Heath prison is “showing the rest of the NHS the art of the possible".
