Success of Suffolk Diabetes Website

7 November 2003

A website for people with diabetes in Suffolk has been hailed a success after it received over 30,000 visits in the first year.

DiabeteSuffolk.com was launched by the West Suffolk Diabetes Team on World Diabetes Day last year, 14^th November. Since launch, the site has received over 30,000 visits which now average over 200 each day. It contains information on understanding diabetes and how to live with and manage the condition. The site covers over a hundred and fifty different topics ranging from information on insulin injections, to advice on travel.

From a few hundred visits per month when it opened last year, the popularity of the site has steadily grown. 1,507 people visited the website in January this year; by June this had risen to 2,331. However, it was during the summer that interest in the site really began to explode – from 3,287 visits in July to 5,676 in October. DiabeteSuffolk also generated a lot of international interest at the 2003 Congress of the International Diabetes Federation which was held in Paris in August this year.

Several diabetes units around the country already use the website to download information for their patients. The site has also been reviewed on OMNI (Organising Medical Networked Information) which is a gateway to evaluated, quality Internet resources in health and medicine in the UK.

The Diabetes Department at the West Suffolk Hospital use the website to encourage the principle of self management among people with diabetes. The West Suffolk NHS Trust sponsored a special computer terminal in the Outpatients department which is used by patients to browse the website while waiting to be seen at the diabetes clinic. Outreach clinics in Sudbury, Newmarket and Thetford lack access to the internet, therefore the West Suffolk Branch of Diabetes UK contributed £500 towards the purchase of a laptop computer which will help take the website out to these peripheral clinics.

The first anniversary of the website will be marked by the publication of several new information pages which will be added on 14^th November 2003. Future developments may include a chat room to help local patients with diabetes to share their experiences.

The Diabetes team at the West Suffolk are very pleased with the popularity of the site so far. To have had well over 5,000 visits in October is a good indication that people find the site useful and accessible. Anyone with diabetes living locally is urged to have a look at the site, if they have not already done so, at www.diabetesuffolk.com.