Consensus on Choice of Insulin Pen Devices in Routine Clinical Practice in India

Although insulin delivery devices are widely used by the patients, there is a paucity of published guidelines to help professionals manage their patients in insulin therapies. To provide simple and easily implementable guidelines to health care physicians on the choice of insulin delivery devices in routine clinical practice, experts in diabetes gathered together and discussed the recommendations at the National insulin Summit 2018. An ideal insulin delivery device should accurately deliver the prescribed dose of insulin and be easy to use. Recommendations are: (1) insulin should be initiated by using an insulin device if the patient seems to discontinue insulin therapy. (2) Pen devices offer accurate dosing than a syringe and vial and are associated with cost savings in the long term. (3) Switching over from syringes and vial to disposable pen devices improves adherence. (4) FlexPen^® offers better accuracy, and it requires lower dose force and injection force than SoloStar^® and KwikPen^® (5). Durable delivery pens such as NovoPen^® 4 maintain accuracy and low dose force compared with vials and syringes. (6) One pen should be used by only one patient. (7) Regular counseling on the proper use of the pen device is required regularly. This consensus-based recommendation is a useful reference tool for health care practitioners to initiate insulin therapy in patients with diabetes by using the appropriate insulin pen device.