The NHS 10 Year Plan and your diabetes tech: promise vs reality
The 10 Year Health Plan for England names wearable diabetes tech like CGM and hybrid closed loop as transformational, and promises wider access.
On 3 July 2025 the government published its 10 Year Health Plan for England, and buried in a very large document is something that matters if you have Type 1: it names wearable tech like continuous glucose monitors and closed loop systems as a big part of the future and promises wider access. That is encouraging. It is also, for now, a statement of intent rather than a change you will feel next week.
- A continuous glucose monitor (CGM) is a small sensor worn on the skin that reads your glucose all day and sends it to a phone or handset.
- The plan calls this kind of technology transformational and promises to widen access, including sharing data through the NHS App.
- It is an ambition, not a delivered service: a ten year plan sets a direction, it does not switch anything on for you by itself.
- Diabetes UK welcomed it but warned the promise only counts if access is made fair, because it is uneven today.
- The useful move is not to wait for the plan to arrive, but to ask what your local team can offer now.
What the plan actually promises
The 10 Year Health Plan is a broad strategy for the NHS in England, built around moving care closer to home and leaning harder on technology. For Type 1, the relevant thread is that it treats wearable devices, CGM and hybrid closed loop systems, as central rather than optional, and talks about making them available to more people and joining up the data they produce through the NHS App.
On paper, that is the NHS backing exactly the tools most people with Type 1 already know they want. A hybrid closed loop, an insulin pump and sensor that adjust background insulin between them, is named as the kind of care the plan wants to scale up. The intent is genuinely in the right place.
Why a plan is not the same as access
Here is the honest part. A plan is a set of intentions with a ten year horizon, and the history of Type 1 tech in the NHS is that access has been real but patchy, differing sharply between areas and services. Diabetes UK’s response made exactly this point: the ambition is welcome, but it only means something if the access that follows is fair, rather than depending on which service you happen to be under. Announcements do not reach you directly. Local commissioning and your own clinic do.
So the practical stance is not to sit tight waiting for a strategy to trickle down. Whatever the plan says about the future, there are clear eligibility routes for CGM and closed loop right now, and they have widened in recent years. What you can actually get today is decided at your clinic, so that is where the real answer is, and it is a fair thing to ask about at your next appointment.