A new campaign launched by the UK’s Diabetes Research Network (DRN) aims to recruit up to 25,000 diabetes patients over an 18-month period to a ‘consent for approach’ database that should help to accelerate set-up times for clinical trials in the field, according to PharmaTimes.

The DRN, part of the National Institute for Health Research’s Clinical Research Network, is rolling out the ‘Help Diabeates’ campaign in the North West and South West of England as well as the North East of London.

At this juncture, potential participants can decide whether they want to be included on the DRN’s consent-for-approach’ database. This would mean they agreed to being contacted in the future should a clinical trial come up that matched their condition. 

There are more than 2.8 million people with diabetes in the UK and the estimated cost to the National Health Service of the disease and it complications is as much as £9 billion per year, around 10% of the total NHS budget.