00:00Hi, I'm Alex Miros. I'm a professor of endocrinology at Ulster University and a
00:04consultant endocrinologist in the Western Trust. Tell us a little bit about the
00:09PeaceTime project. It's a major investment over the following year, 10
00:13million euros through the EAP PeacePlus money. It is a major investment from this
00:19PeacePlus program which is delivered by the SEUPV and it is to set up the first
00:25obesity management services in the northwest of the island. This is the
00:33first time that we are setting up services in Northern Ireland and
00:36enhancing some of the existing services in the neighboring county of Donegal. We
00:42will be treating 9,000 people who have got obesity and its complications. We will be
00:49doing that for a period of 12 months for every patient with assessments and inputs
00:55also after the 12 months. This is a four-year project and what we would ideally
01:00like to achieve is to demonstrate that this is feasible and that it can be
01:05adopted and rolled out throughout Northern Ireland if not throughout national
01:13services here and beyond.
01:16And techno-obesity is one of the biggest drivers of chronic ill-health and
01:23permorbidity rates and air-to-air unexpected mortality and things like that. So this is key to sort of get rid of those health inequalities that we suffer from here.
01:34So obesity, as we say, is a gateway disease. It can lead to more than 200 complications.
01:43These complications don't only cost the health service, they don't only cost society, but as you rightly say, make people live shorter lives and they cause suffering on a day-to-day basis.
01:59If we address obesity upstream, early on, then we can have a major impact on these people's lives later on with reduced cost to the health care service and reduced cost to society.
02:14I'm just trying to get people, whilst they're still vertical, rather than when they're horizontal and you have to use the frontline health care services. Tell me a little bit about how it's going to work.
02:24Yeah. So it's going to be operational in Darien, Straban and Donagol. We will be treating 5,000 patients in Northern Ireland, 4,000 patients in the Republic of Ireland.
02:35People will be able to refer to us through the GPs, but also through other community partners that we are working with.
02:43They will be assessed by a multidisciplinary team of professionals that involves doctors, nurses, dietitians, psychologists, physical activity specialists and health coaches.
02:58And what we will be doing is we will be personalizing the treatment depending on the needs of the individual.
03:06In addition to that, people will not be just getting one-to-one or group support.
03:12They will also be getting a lot of digital support, which is a very cost effective way of achieving and maintaining some of the health benefits from the human interaction.
03:24And that's the kind of thing we would only have dreamed about years ago.
03:28We've got so much data now and all the computer-based systems.
03:32You can do a lot of research and do a lot of things a lot quicker than you would have done in the past.
03:36So that obviously helps.
03:38So we're using that because every healthcare service does not have enough money, whether we like it or not.
03:46So what we're trying to do is to provide good care in the most cost-efficient way.
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