New horizons

This week the EASD e-Learning platform is launching a new section on its site. Called ‘Horizons’, the section aims to be a more user-friendly central place where our learners can get diabetes news, updates about EASD and the diabetes research world generally and, of course, access our own initiatives – such as ‘Around the diabetes world’, the ‘COVID-19 and diabetes’ lectures, etc. There’ll be blogs, news, interviews, videocasts, podcasts – and a new diary dates listing to help you keep up-to-date with diabetes-related conferences, meetings, deadlines for grant applications etc.

In tandem with this we have made some other changes to the site, with a new toolbar feature to make it easier for users to get help using the site, to flag up any technical problems and provide feedback on our content. Much of this work has been done in response to user feedback and to improve the way we interact with learners (for more on that, see our newspiece ‘You said, we did’).

To coincide with the launch, we are launching a new series of short COVID-19-related films. The 20 films about COVID-19 and diabetes that we produced last year were among the most played, well-received items on the e-Learning platform. There have been a great many advances in our understanding of COVID-19 and its relationship with diabetes in the time since the last of these was posted in June 2020. These films will give learners opportunities to catch up on recent developments and reflect on some of the lessons of the pandemic.

Other new initiatives in the pipeline can also be accessed via the Horizons section. These include a series of podcasts from eminent diabetes clinicians called ‘The patient who changed the way I think about diabetes’ and films in which two experts interview one another on key topics in diabetes clinical research and practice, called ‘The long and the short of it’.

So watch this space…

To see Professor Stefano Del Prato’s film on COVID-19 and diabetes, the first in our new series, click here.