Good, Great and Disappointment - A Day with Medtronic

I was fortunate enough to get along to a Medtronic Bloggers meeting over at their UK Headquarters the other day. As with last year's meeting the highlight for me was to meet others active in the UK Type 1 online community. Dave, Adrienne and her daughter Jess, Lindsay and Mike were amongst those there. INPUT were also excellently  - and expertly - represented by Lesley and Melissa.

Of course, the Diabetes business unit within Medtronic UK is just as commercially driven as any other diabetes technology company. But one thing I continue to be impressed by is what feels like a genuine wish on behalf of the UK team to improve general diabetes education and awareness. Most of the day was spent having a wide-open discussion on a number of current planned initiatives to improve the information and support available to the diabetes community.

For this post though, I'm going to focus on three products that were also on the agenda, two of which have been available for a little while and one that's just been approved in Europe.

Personally, one's frankly a disappointment (because of what it could have been), one's been a welcome addition and the other has transformed our daily T1 journey. So, which is which?

Infusion Sets

It might not be glamorous, but if you can't get your insulin safely and reliably from your whizzy pump into your subcutaneous tissue, there's not much point turning up to the insulin party...

The Mio 30 is a relatively newcomer in the infusion set line up. A 30 degree Teflon infusion set, it seems to have gone down pretty well from my (no doubt incomplete) recollection of the online community's response over the past few months.

From our own personal point of view, Janki seems to prefer the Mio 30, saying they are (usually) less painful to insert. Less painful. Not zero pain. It's probably worth mentioning the needle is very visible when you're ready to insert and harder to obscure than the Mios. Lewis put together a nice summary of the Mio 30 on his blog, including an insertion video.

At home, they're our usual option. However, if we need to change a set whilst we're out and about, we tend to fall back on the old Mio sets - they're easier to carry and, crucially, all the sharps from the change, including the reservoir needle and old line, can be safely tucked inside the Mio's shell for safe disposal back at home. Others at the meeting reported managing to squeeze everything in, but for me it's too much of a squeeze.

After the June 2015 announcement that BD would partner with Medtronic to release a novel infusion set, designed to reduce occlusions, I would have loved to hear news about FlowSmart but unfortunately there was nothing ready to share at this time.

Guardian Connect

On the day we met, Guardian Connect received its CE approval: great news indeed. Guardian Connect would appear to offer a neat solution to those running CGM without a pump, so for Type 1s and Type 2s using Multiple Daily Injections (MDI).

Guardian Connect - due to release later in 2016

But for those of us with an Enlite CGM sensor linked to a pump, you can't (as far as I can tell) run Guardian Connect as well :(  For that, we need a 640g-compatible MiniMed Connect (we've seen it online for the 670g in the US under Clinical Trial settings...).

Prototype MiniMed Connect with a 670g - coming to the 640g? No sign at the moment :(

There was no news of a possible MiniMed Connect solution, which is a big shame and - I think - a missed opportunity for Medtronic. In terms of remote access to our 640g data, the closest we have is Lennart's Android Nightscout uploader. With almost 500 monthly active users (of the beta version), it's clear the demand for a MiniMed Connect-type solution for the 640g is there.

If you're on a 640g, Guardian Connect won't work, but Nightscout for Android is available

MiniMed Connect for the 640g would have offered an interesting comparison with, potentially, additional functionality and community reach - and with Nightscout integration using Mark Wilson's Connect bridge. By the way, I would expect Guardian Connect users to be able to use Mark's bridge should they want to get CGM data to Nightscout (to use the excellent reports now available in Nightscout, for example).

If you're interested in finding out more about Guardian Connect, including its release date (hopefully later this year) you can email Medtronic at GuardianConnectUK@medtronic.com

Enlite One Press Serter

I'm only going to comment on our personal experience - sample size 1 - but the executive summary would be that the relatively new One Press Serter is a massive improvement when it comes to gently inserting the Enlite sensors: the marketing blurb really does ring true, for us at least.

For some time we'd given up with the older dual-press inserter (one button to press twice). It appeared to be pretty brutal and painful for Janki and wasn't helping with our rather ragged Enlite performance. We switched to manual insertion, which helped improve Enlite performance and made insertion more bearable.  However, a manual insertion on a wriggling youngster, who's fed up with the pain and disruption from Enlites, often lasting for less than their labelled six days, was no fun for anyone.

And so the One Press Serter has breathed fresh life and confidence into our Enlite CGM use. It's not perfect - we still get more Enlite failures than we should - but performance is back to where it was around 18 months ago and although a sensor change is never welcome, it's hopefully less dreaded than of late. A huge thank-you to the team that designed and put this together.

Detailed instructions for its use can be found on the Medtronic Australian site.

Thanks to Medtronic UK for the invitation to their bloggers meeting. As with last year's event, I received as much coffee as I could manage, lunch and travel expenses for my trouble. Medtronic set the agenda for the day but did not dictate, nor suggest, what should or should not be written about.