 We always say, “that looks that it was yesterday…” but has been 20 years from the time we began with the idea to bring high quality Diabetes Education to the diabetic community with clinidiabet.com
From the beginning, our objective has been to help in diabetes through education, focused basically in the Hispanic Community in the world, including Latin America. In that time, trustworthy information in Spanish available in the Internet was scarce. We tried to keep an English version, thanks to the help of numerous volunteers that donated time and effort with translation and in special with the letter that celebrate our 20th anniversary. Thanks for your altruistic support and help.
Do the fact that our main interest and vocation is in the development of teaching aids and educational material, we took the decision to put all our material free on the web to help and educate the diabetes community, because is well known that is the lack of information is one of the main causes of the diabetic complications.
From the beginning, we wanted to put the person with diabetes as the main character in all our efforts and we want to say thanks to thousands of patients with diabetes that visit our website and come back regularly, not only to read our educational materials, but to learn also about other fields like the new and different medications and the most recent diabetes technology dedicated to help people with diabetes.
The human aspect is the most important thing in clinidiabet.com, and for this reason we created informational materials about emotional and psychological health, so patients are respected and able to take their own decisions. I want to acknowledge all those people that helped me to keep always in my mind the “human aspect” of the diabetes behind the technical side with the numbers and methodology and the importance of the quality of life.
People like our GREAT Richard Rubin (Dick) was the first to change my perception of Diabetes, after reading his book “Psyching Out Diabetes”, that I read many years ago during summer vacations. He is not with us anymore, but his teachings and wisdom will remain with us forever. I must also acknowledge my friend and teacher Axel Hirsh that for many years was the director of a blog in clinidiabet.com that specifically tried to help and put together diabetes and personal lives in our patients; Mr. Hirsh is now retired half-time, but he is always welcome to publish his writings and reflexions in our pages.
In addition I strongly believe that is important to put the patient as the center of their own decisions, and I learn that from the GREAT teachings of Robert Anderson (Bob), creator of the EMPOWERMENT concept in diabetes, founder of an school of psychologists and counselors interested to help patients taking in account body and mind and, placing our patient in the “driver seat”.
There has been of course a lot of other people which influenced in a positive way our teamwork with the patients, just to mentions Mark Peyrot, Bill Polonsky, Dan Cox, etc. and many others that although I don’t mentions all here, we are very grateful for their teachings and support.
I also underline the importance of teaching the educator and we put a section with materials from different conferences and or slides from Dr. Antuña de Alaíz.
Our interest to inform about technology and diabetes has been presented in clinidiabet.com, like the insulin pumps thanks to Dr. Jay Skyler and Dr. Irl Hirsh, which many years ago interested me in the use technology to help our diabetic patients until we reach the biological cure of the disease. I know, that wonderful devices are not a cure, but in the meanwhile technology can help to diminish many worries in our patients and improve their lives.
I want to express acknowledgment to our sponsors and supporters that along all of these years had trust and belief in our project helping to keep it alive and independent.
Thanks to our volunteers and translators that during all of those years has been making of our page a truly bilingual informative center.
Thanks our graphic designer and Webmaster Iván Alonso, that with creativity and continuous innovation has been able to keep our page always young, along the rapid changes and advancements of the Internet.
In this digital era, we are very proud to celebrate 20 years at the service of the diabetic community. We expect to continue for many years with high quality diabetes information specially now that is the time of the “copy and paste”, without respect for the copyright, we will try our best to keep our visitors updated in new technologies but ALWAYS taking into account the human and social side of the diabetes, because diabetes happens to a human being and his loved ones.
Dr. Antuña de Alaíz
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