About us
One of the leading centres in London
Barts and The London Centre for Diabetes and Metabolism is based at two historic and world-renowned hospitals; The Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel, and St Bartholomew’s Hospital (known as Barts) in the City of London.
We treat NHS patients with diabetes from Tower Hamlets, the City of London and many other parts of east London and Essex. We also treat people who work in the City and who want to attend an evening clinic rather than take time off work to attend their local daytime diabetes clinic. Our clinics dealing with autoimmune diabetes in adults receive referrals from all over the south east. Our laboratories provide a national service for testing biomarkers in diabetes.
Our leading obesity service treats patients from all over the south of England. For more information about this service, please click here.
Patients with lipid / cholesterol disorders can find out more about these conditions and the treatments offered at our centre by clicking here.
Partnership in diabetes care
Diabetes is a lifelong condition. Contacts with health professionals about diabetes may only amount to a few hours per year, and for the rest of the time the person with diabetes manages their condition themselves. We aim to empower people to manage their condition by using group and one-to-one education delivered by our multidisciplinary team.
Leading specialists and a multidisciplinary team
Our leading specialists are supported by a multidisciplinary team. The Royal London Hospital team comprises five diabetes consultants, six diabetes specialist registrars, two diabetes specialist nurses, one podiatrist, a diabetes midwife and a team of administrative and secretarial staff. The Barts team comprises three consultants, three diabetes nurses, a specialist diabetes dietitian, podiatry and secretarial staff.
All members of our team are committed to providing the highest possible standards of care. Click here to find out more about our team.
Using research to develop cutting-edge treatments
We are at the cutting edge of diabetes and metabolism research. As a large teaching and specialist hospital, patients under our care are provided with the most advanced and successful treatments. We have been identified as one of the top five institutions in England for research in our speciality by the National Institute for Health Research. We have wide ranging research interests as part of the Institute for Cell and Molecular Science at Barts and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry. For more information, please click here.
Our team has produced internationally recognised work in the fields of genetics of diabetes (Prof Graham Hitman), autoimmune diabetes (Prof David Leslie) and the physiology of obesity (Dr Simon Coppack). More recently, the department has received substantial grants from the Medical Research Council to study methods of preventing diabetes in people of South Asian origin, and grants from the European Union. Our department has also been awarded funding with academic primary care (£1.4m) from the Department of Health to develop a Diabetes Local Research Network. For more information about our research activities please click here.
Seamless service
We aim to ensure that patients and their primary care teams (GPs, community nurses etc) are kept fully informed of their treatment, and involved in the decisions about their care. We meet on a regular basis with our colleagues in the community to share clinical information and the latest treatments for diabetes, obesity and lipids disorders.
Education and training
We offer regular study days in diabetes for professional staff to get updated on the latest treatments and care for patients with diabetes. We support the standards of the National Service Framework (NSF) for diabetes and offer diabetes study days, link nurse training and Warwick insulin start programme training in order to meet the standards set out in the NSF.
Each ward has a Diabetes Link Nurse who is trained to teach blood glucose monitoring in their area and disseminate to staff the knowledge and skills they have acquired in the diabetes education days.
We regularly run BERTIE courses at Barts Hospital for our patients with type 1 diabetes. The course teaches patients how to adjust their insulin doses so they can lead normal lives. Our type 1 diabetes clinic at Barts Hospital also offers specialist training for patients on how to use insulin infusion pumps.
