[DANISH VERSION]

Can it be implemented?
Will the health service pay for it? 

The answers must be ‘yes’ if a piece of research is going to interest Signe Schmidt, this year’s winner of the Danish Diabetes Academy’s “DDA-Funded Scientist Award”.

- A fantastic widget that costs a million is not what I am after, she says. But she is passionate about technology, and especially about securing widespread adoption of the artificial pancreas. The artificial pancreas has the potential to transform the daily life of people with diabetes: it takes care of maintaining the blood sugar balance so that the person with diabetes can concentrate on balancing all other things in life.

What is preoccupying her most right now, however, is how to implement the research group’s results with small quantities of glucagon as an alternative to eating sugar for people with diabetes who suffer from low blood sugar. She has taken out a patent on the results together with the research group and researchers from the Technical University of Denmark and the Danish firm Zealand Pharma. - An achievement that has also helped her win the Danish Diabetes Academy’s DDA-Funded Scientist Award 2021. This award is given to a researcher with ‘great potential to be a world-class researcher within his/her field of expertise’. The award is first and foremost a mark of distinction, but it also comes with DKK 25,000.

- In the health service’s prioritisation of treatments, there has traditionally been less of a focus on soft values such as quality of life, and much more of a focus on cost. That is the reality we have to deal with. Therefore, the solutions we pursue must provide quality of life, but they must also be affordable. Otherwise, they will never be included in the range of available treatments, she says.

Signe Schmidt, currently a senior researcher and team leader at the Steno Diabetes Center Copenhagen, firmly believes that glucagon can be a good alternative to sugar when people with diabetes suffer from low blood sugar. 

- Many people with diabetes struggle with their weight and are better off avoiding the high calories that sugar contains. For others, it may be nice not to have to recalculate carbohydrates and insulin quantity, she says.

Signe Schmidt and her colleagues have secured the patent and established a collaboration with the Danish biotech research company Zealand Pharma. She is, however, still working on demonstrating the benefits of glucagon to patients in a wide variety of everyday situations.

Patients’ interests in mind
Professor Kirsten Nørgaard, Signe Schmidt’s boss and mentor, nominated Signe Schmidt for the DDA-Funded Scientist Award 2021. One of Kirsten Nørgaard’s motivations was that Signe Schmidt’s research has attracted significant attention both nationally and internationally, and she praises Signe for always having the patients’ interests in mind.

- Of course I have their interests in mind’, says Signe Schmidt, highlighting that it is in the contact with people with diabetes that she finds her inspiration for new fields of research.

- In the health service’s prioritisation of treatments, there has traditionally been less of a focus on soft values such as quality of life, and much more of a focus on cost. That is the reality we have to deal with. Therefore, the solutions we pursue must provide quality of life, but they must also be affordable. Otherwise, they will never be included in the range of available treatments, she says.

One example is the BolusCal^® training concept that she helped develop. It is used by thousands of people throughout Europe whom it has helped achieve both greater treatment satisfaction and better blood sugar values.

Being thanked by someone with diabetes is the greatest reward
Her great commitment to patients has led, among other things, to the Danish Diabetes Association asking her to sit on their expert council and to her fighting for the opportunity both to do research and to work as a doctor.

- It is great having publications accepted, being cited or hearing that your research results have changed treatment practice, but the greatest reward of all for me is being thanked by someone with diabetes’, she said in an interview in the Danish Diabetes Academy’s 2016 book of pen-portraits, 12 Talented Researchers.

About the "DDA-Funded Scientist Award 2021"
The award is given to a researcher with ‘great potential to be a world-class researcher within his/her field of expertise’; the award is first and foremost a mark of distinction, but it also comes with DKK 25,000.

→ Read about the winner of the DDA Young Investigator Award 2021, Nicolai Albrechtsen
→ See previous Award winners

CONTACT DETAILS:
Signe Schmidt MD, PhD
Senior Researcher and Team Leader
Direct telephone: +45 51 17 47 85
E-mail: signe.schmidt@regionh.dk
Steno Diabetes Center Copenhagen
Web: www.sdcc.dk

CONTACT FOR DANISH DIABETES ACADEMY:
Tore S. Christiansen, Managing Director
Phone: 29 64 67 64
E-mail: tore.christiansen@rsyd.dk