Integrating care across disciplines and organisations around the needs of the person with diabetes has been proposed as an approach that could improve care while reducing cost- but has it and can it? Integrated Diabetes Care- A Multidisciplinary Approach collates evidence of worldwide approaches to both horizontal integration (across disciplines) and vertical integration (across organizations) in diabetes care and describe what was done, what worked and what appeared to be the barriers to achieving the goals of the programmes. Evidence is sought from groups who have developed different approaches to integrating diabetes care in different health systems (eg insurance vs tax payer funded, single vs multiple organization, published vs unpublished). A final chapter brings the evidence together for a final discussion about what seems to work and what does not.
About the Author:

Professor Simmons, MA, MBBS, MD, FRACP, FRCP, Professor of Medicine, Western Sydney University and Head of Department, Endocrinology, Campbelltown Hospital, NSW, Australia, Professorial Fellow, University of Melbourne, Visiting Professor, University of Örebro. Professor Simmons is a diabetes clinician and clinical epidemiologist who has undertaken significant community diabetes work in the UK, New Zealand, Australia and the US over the last 27 years attempting to improve the care and lives of people with diabetes. Professor Simmons previously co-chaired the Diabetes UK Diabetes Health professional education working group and is the clinical lead for the Cambridgeshire Diabetes Education Project, the national pilot for how we use diabetes health professional competency frameworks in clinical practice. He is a former President of the Australasian diabetes in Pregnancy Society

Helmut Wenzel, MAS, Emeritus, Head of Scientific Reimbursement Management Department in Diabetes Care, Roche Diagnostics. Helmut Wenzel is ahealth economist. He was working in the pharmaceutical and diagnostic industry for 21 years. In his last position his was responsible for Scien-tific Reimbursement Management in Diabetes Care at Roche. Before that he hea-ded the Medical Affairs Department in the German sales organization. He has been responsible for Outcomes Research and Health Economics in different functions in Roche, and had also held that posi-tion with Boehringer Mannheim before the take-over by Roche.

Dr. Janice Zgibor is an Associate Professor of Epidemiology and Pharmacy, in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics in the College of Public Health at the University of South Florida. She is also Director of Doctoral Studies in Epidemiology at USF. Dr Zgibor received her BS in Pharmacy at the University of Pittsburgh and worked as practicing pharmacist for eleven years. She received her MPH and PhD in epidemiology from the University of Pittsburgh. Her postdoctoral training was in the Endocrine Division in the School of Medicine. Dr. Zgibor's research focuses on improving the quality of care for patients with diabetes through interventions at the patient and primary care level. She has worked in this area of research for more than 20 years and has more than 80 peer-reviewed publications.