From the News Wire: iPhone App Connects to Glucose Meters

Telcare’s New iPhone App Connects to Glucose Meters Even Oceans Apart:Telcare, the maker of the Telcare BGM cellular enabled blood glucose meter, has released an iPhone app that can gather data from the meter even if they’re physically apart. 

This not only allows you to watch your own glucose, but a parent of a diabetic child can make sure the kid takes regular readings and almost immediately know what the output is.
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OmniPod and One Touch to Connect

From the News Wire:

Johnson & Johnson's market-leading LifeScan blood glucose monitor will be incorporated intothe remote controller for Insulet's next-generation OmniPod insulin pump.

The next generation of Insulet's (NSDQ:PODD) OmniPod insulin pump, which is awaiting 510(k) clearance from the FDA, will be compatible with the LifeScan blood glucose monitoring technology made by Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:JNJ).

The 2 companies inked a deal for LifeScan's OneTouch technology to be incorporated into a new personal diabetes manager that patients use to control the OmniPod. Insulet's chief commercial officer, Peter Devlin, told MassDevice.com that the company is targeting a mid-2013 commercial release.

More: http://www.massdevice.com/news/diabetes-insulet-inks-deal-with-jjs-lifesscan-next-gen-omnipod

How Good Was Animas Customer Service?

Hint: I’m writing thank you notes.

A milestone in our kids' school careers is the 8th grade play. All the kids participate in a a number of ways - acting, makeup, making props and other team building processes. Delaney was practicing acting yesterday. Her part calls for her to dramatically roll across stage or some such thing. As she did her pump slipped out and she dramatically rolled it was across more than the actual stage. Exit one cracked Ping pump screen, stage left.

Amimas has always been great about replacing pumps when life happens. Life, not accidents. Being a regular kid is no accident. It is the goal.*

Sometimes when life happens, pumps need to be replaced. That is a great thing! It means the T1D kid was more focused on being normal than being T1D with an inulin pump.

While replacing a pump sounds easy, it actually isn’t. Our friends in the device business have to keep track of everything to keep the regulators happy. They gotta know who has what device, made when, with what parts, by what factory and probably at what time and if that time was daylight savings time or not. That way, if anything ever goes wrong, with any of the parts, they know who they are gonna call. Dotting i-s and crossing t-s takes systematic processes, rules, records, people and time.

Aminas’s offices are about 45 minutes from my house. When I can, I drive down for replacements. It saves a night time without a pump. That Animas can, at times, make that happen is brilliant.

I know the names of two of the people who made that happen yesterday, Steve and Bill. They made magic because of who they are and because they could. All too often we ascribe the role of villain to the companies who make the tools we rely on. The truth is way more often they are the mild mannered alter egos of super heroes who are trying to live with in the rules. They get what we are trying to do, which in this case is let life happen. When they can, they slip into the spandex and become super heroes.

I think there is probably more than one Steve and Bill at Animas. I’m waiting on a return call to get last names so I can mail LY/MI pins with thank you cards. All in all if they are busy helping others with real emergencies I’m cool. Somehow if getting a name takes longer than getting a pump replaced that would be magic where it matters.

Got as story of Magic Service? I would love to hear about it as a post here or as a link here to your own blog post about a hero.

*More Your Diabetes May Vary ramblings about The Goal:
http://www.ydmv.net/2008/08/what-is-your-goal.html
http://www.ydmv.net/2008/03/newbie-advice-long-run.html

Who best to say, "You will be okay."

“If I could, I would tell you although you might not believe it right now, you will be okay…” Julie Keon. She wrote that as a mom at children's hospital looking at another mother. 

Julie offers a perfect description of why am committed to the diabetes online community (DOC). Why I went to the point to get a master degree in health communication.  She explains it in that simple idea, I want to help others believe they will be okay.

I know peer to peer support is critical in many healthcare situations, particularly chronic conditions. When our first child was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes a message similar to Julie’s helped me through the first few days. Well okay it was an irreverent and funny message not too like Julie’s but the point was the same, we would will be okay, in time we would laugh again. 

Hearing that from a veteran patient is different from hearing it from anyone else. In master program classes, my fellow students and I talked academically about the credibility of the messenger. In the real world I know that credibility comes from empathy. Someone who know the shoes you have beed asked to walk in, is a source of credibility beyond any other. 

An article on Peer-to-peer healthcare by Susan Fox the Pew Research Center quotes Susan Sontag about dual citizenship in the lands of the well and sick. With a chronic condition like type 1 the passport to the kingdom of the well that Sontag speaks of is permanently revoked. With type 1, try as you might you will never, as Fox says, “get the hell out of the kingdom of the sick and back to the kingdom of the well." Except most of the time with a people with a chronic condition aren’t what people understand as actually sick. They are 'just' managing a condition.

Fox, I think wonderfully, points out that peer-to-peer healthcare does not replace health processionals. She observes, “doctors, nurses, and other health professionals continue to be the first choice for most people with health concerns, especially among people living with chronic conditions.” She however says, The picture shifts when we ask about emotional support in dealing with a health issue: fellow patients, friends, and family are the much more popular choice.” 

That is an opportunity for medical professionals to suggest health 2.0 as an asset to help their patients. Kim Liu writes in her article “Patients Week 2011: How Health 2.0 can improve patient compliance” that there peer-to peer connections, well improve patient compliance.  

Peer-to-peer online heath communities need not be seen as a threat by healthcare professionals, because, well, they are not a threat. In fact care givers recommending quality peer-to-peer sites may improve patient outcomes. 

Liu comments on a summit of diabetes educators and online opinion leaders sponsored by my friends at Roche. I was there. It wasn’t quite as pretty as Liu makes out. In fact initially it was a bit of a clash. However from that event ongoing an working relationship has evolved between the diabetes industry and social media writers. One that hopefully moves towards connecting the power of peer-to-peer communications into care programs particularly recognizing the credibility of peers to help those living with chronic conditions.  

I want to be a part of that - a collaboration that helps the newly diagnosed feel that they “will be okay.”

Peers can best provide desperately needed emotional support  at diagnosis. Who better to say, "You will be OK."



References:
Julie Keon Julie Keon http://www.whatiwouldtellyou.com/
Bennet Dunlap http://www.ydmv.net/2008/01/little-help-from-your-friends.html
Susan Fox http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2011/Medicine-20/Part-1.aspx
Kim Liu http://social.eyeforpharma.com/patients/patients’-week-2011-how-health-20-can-improve-patient-compliance

Talking with Teens

I had a conversation about teens and type 1 diabetes the other day. It was kind of an interview. I answer a lot of questions. I strayed off topic too.  (I know me digress! Who would think it possible?) 

Some how I think I forgot my favorite teen digression: if you expect your teens to talk with you, you need to have invested time talking with them before they were teens. If you were too busy watching the game, playing golf or skipping the occasional midnight movie premiere when they were tweens, you may have taught them you are not interested in them. 

Learn to be interested in what they like. This may come as a shock but all their music doesn’t suck and a lot of your’s does. Some where there is a balance in there. Netflix can help you both find stuff you didn’t now about and can enjoy a conversation on; Man on Wire, Exit Through The Gift Shop. 

It also helps to be genuinely willing to hear what they have to say if they do talk with you. If they like something you don’t, be open to why. Five will get you ten your behaviors taught them the why and you didn’t even know it. 

I like teens, so far they are the most fun age the kids have been. They start showing flashes of real interesting stuff as teens. Some is a reflection that is an interesting perspective of yourself and some is a fascinating tangent from who know where. Either way teens are as good as the time you have invested in them. 

That guess that isn’t any kind of a surprise.




Also on YDMV about teens at T1D: Dr Freud - Endocrinologist and Teen Motivator


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Succeed in Safe Schools - PA HB 1338

Kids should be safe at school.

Including kids with diabetes. Some kids may need support to be safe.  Legitimate budget, scheduling and other reasons may keep a school from having nursing coverage. Safe at school means the kids can go to school and be safe if the nurse has a family issue, traffic problem, heaven forbid needs to escort another kid to the hospital in an emergency or if the school doesn't have a nurse.

There are best practices recommended for diabetes and schools created by the leading health and education professionals. They are in a document called Helping the Student with Diabetes Succeed: A Guide for School Personnel. It was written by the NDEP, a partnership of the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and more than 200 public and private organizations.

Not exactly bums.

"Helping" anticipate that, while not ideal, some schools without a nurse may still need to help a child with diabetes succeed. Succeed what a great word.

Let's focus on succeeding.

Legislation is pending in Pennsylvania to try to help kids succeed in safe schools. There is a op/ed piece in @PhillyInquire on the topic and it is well worth reading. One commenter at the paper asks if proponents would send their diabetic child to a school without a nurse.

I have and would.

While we currently have the World Greatest School Nurse, we have never insisted upon a school nurse. I recognize that safe at school can be accomplished with non medical professionals who are open, communicative and trained. That said even a great nurse will be constrained by narrow minded and uncommunicative people in power who refuse to consider best practices for their own ends.

To help kids succeed in safe schools, I support PA HB 1338. I encourage you to learn about best practaces and support it, or similar legislation in your state, too.

Voices of YDMV.

I am honored to be a guest on Just Talking this week.  Christopher and I had a great time talking and I probably got over passionate about my favorite BBC Top Gear episode (Hint: Trying to Killing a Toyota Truck.) I may have been as interested in community support, the DOC, #DSMA and why I follow @SStrumello on twitter or maybe not. Have you seen that Top Gear?

I think PodCasting is brilliant. The first diabetes online resource I followed was DiabeticFeed. That feed is on hiatus for the spectacularly wonderful grounds that chasing around a toddler is serious work. Fortunately Just Talking, DSMA Live and other shave stepped up to the plate with podcast production. Good thing. I couldn't do it.

Also sharing the voice of the YDMV household is my former toddler and now tall young adult Connor. He spoke to a group of potential corporate sponsors of ADA’s Tour de Cure  in the packed conference room of a very prestigious law firm in downtown Philly this morning. Closing the presentation, he took the scary statistics and made them a both positive and personal. He was optimistic and appreciative of the support networks, including advocacy groups and their corporate sponsors, that make it possible for people to pursue dreams in their lives with diabetes.

Sadly the Tour is the day of Connor high school graduation or we would ride.

Connor did a fantastic job if I do say so myself. And in case independent no aligned testimony is required, a partner in the firm told Connor he would make a great litigator and the executive director of the local ADA chapter wants him back at other events. I rest my case.

Want Industry to Know What Matters Most to You? @Diabetes_Sanofi is Listening! (limited time offer)

I recently asked about devices. I am not the only one who's curious to know what matters to people living with diabetes. The Sanofi folks want your two cents and they are willing to entertain a wider perspective than just gadgets. They are also more in a position to do something about it. Sanofi are the makers of some useful stuff. Stuff like Lantus, the soon to come to market iBGStar and sponsors of my favorite bike racing team. Good folks. You may know them on Twitter as @Diabetes_sanofi.

They they want to know, “What Matter Most to You.” I shared my views. (I know! Who would think I, of all people, would share my view?) But Your Diabetes May Vary, in fact I bet it does. Sanofi wants to hear from all of us in the Diabetes Online Community. 

Here's my two cents:

Act NOW the survey closes on Feb 12. 

How about filling out their from.  If you feel inclined, share your essay question reply to:
"I see the biggest challenge in diabetes as _______" as a comment here. 


Who knows your comment may inspire someone else to think about what matters most to them and maybe even share it.

Dexcom and Tandem Announce CGM Development.

From the News Wire:

SAN DIEGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- DexCom, Inc. (NASDAQ:DXCM - News), a leader in continuous glucose monitoring systems, announced today that it has entered into a Development and Commercialization Agreement with Tandem Diabetes Care, Inc. to integrate a future generation of DexCom’s continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) technology with Tandem’s t:slim™ Insulin Delivery System, the first ever touch-screen insulin pump.

Under the terms of the Agreement, Tandem will pay DexCom a technology license fee of $3 million, reimburse DexCom’s development, clinical and regulatory expenses, and upon commercialization of the combined system, Tandem will pay DexCom a royalty of $100 for each CGM-enabled insulin pump sold. 

more here

So that is Animas, Omni Pod, Roche and Tandem all working with Dexcom to integrate DGM into their pumps. I think the Animas agreement is exclusive outside the US (see this post). So all the agreements are nice and all, I hope that we see some products in the marketplace.

Maybe this will help speed up the FDA process.

From the New Wire:

FDA and industry reach agreement in principle on medical device user feesThe FDA and representatives from the medical device industry have reached an agreement in principle on proposed recommendations for the third reauthorization of a medical device user fee program. 

The recommendations would authorize the FDA to collect $595 million in user fees over five years, plus adjustments for inflation. Details of the agreement, such as the fee structure, are expected to be finalized soon 

Under a user fee program, industry agrees to pay fees to help fund a portion of the FDA’s device review activities while the FDA agrees to overall performance goals such as reviewing a certain percentage of applications within a particular time frame. more..