People with type 2 diabetes are sometimes prescribed insulin to help lower their blood sugar. Often, insulin will lower blood sugar too much, which can cause people to go to the hospital or the emergency room because of serious side effects. This can sometimes lead to death.

Insulin can be short acting, intermediate acting, long acting, or pre-mixed and each type of insulin may have a different risk of dangerously low blood sugar. Our study aims to determine which type of insulin treatment has the lowest risk of dangerously low blood sugar and death.

To do this, we will look at historical health records in Manitoba. We will look at every person with type 2 diabetes who has been prescribed insulin and check whether they died or had to go to the hospital or emergency room because of dangerously low blood sugar. From there, we will see if there are differences in those outcomes between different types of insulin.

Patients are not identified to protect their privacy, but we can link records of prescriptions, hospital visits, and emergency department visits to a unique person.

We will share our findings with doctors and patients so we can help improve patient quality of life. Additionally, our findings have the potential to help the healthcare system be more efficient by lowering the number of times people need to go to the hospital or emergency room because of a low blood sugar event.