OBJECTIVES: To evaluate the long-term health and economic outcomes of Insulin Detemir (IDet) therapy in uncontrolled patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) switching from insulin Glargine (IGlar) in the Chinese setting. METHODS: The published and validated CORE Diabetes Model was used to make the long- term (30 years) projection of health economic outcomes. The patient demographic information and clinical endpoints were derived from South Korea sub-analysis of the PREDICTIVE trial. The study was a large, multi-centre, 6 months observational study assessing the safety and efficacy of IDet. HbA1c was reduced of -0.2 % (p<0.05) by switching from IGlar to IDet. Baseline risk factors and racial characteristic data were obtained from Chinese cohort studies. The market retail prices of medications were calculated to estimate treatment costs. The diabetes management and complications costs were obtained from Chinese published data and adjusted to 2010 values using the Chinese Consumer Price Index. An annual discounting rate of 3% was used for both health and economic outcomes. One-way sensitivities analysis was performed. RESULTS: The treatment of IDet converted from IGlar was projected to reduce the cumulative incidences of DM-related complications. Background retinopathy, end-stage renal disease, ulcer, myocardial infarction events were reduced 0.685%,0.167%,0.243%,0.482% respectively. Therapy conversion to IDet was projected to improve life expectancy by 0.061 year, and was associated with improvements of 0.484 quality adjusted life year (QALY). The costs of complications were reduced by CNY 5,595, resulting in a total direct medical cost saving of CNY 2,869. CONCLUSIONS: Therapy conversion from IGlar to IDet in T2DM patients could delay the onset of diabetes complications, was associated with improvements in life expectancy and QALYs, and reduced direct cost over patient lifetimes. IDet was shown to be a dominant treatment option in patients with T2DM inadequately controlled with IGlar in Chinese setting.