Diabetes can cause devastating impacts, including heart disease, stroke, and blindness. In 2010, diabetes was the seventh-leading cause of death in the U.S., and in 2012, its estimated costs were $245 billion.
CHR has been a leader in diabetes research for more than 25 years. In 1989, we helped Kaiser Permanente develop one of the country’s most comprehensive registries of patients with diabetes. We developed the registry so that the health care system could identify its diabetes patients to ensure that they received blood sugar testing and foot exams. However, it also proved very useful for research on diabetes and its complications, making it possible to conduct studies that help clinicians to better serve patients and to help patients better manage their disease.
CHR recently took the lead role in building a massive new dataset of patients with diabetes. The three-year project, called SUPREME-DM (Surveillance, Prevention, and Management of Diabetes Mellitus), created a national infrastructure that will enable many years of comparative effectiveness research on diabetes prevention and treatment. The SUPREME-DM DataLink comprises about 1.3 million adult members with diabetes as well as patients at high risk for developing type 2 diabetes in the membership of each of 11 participating health systems.