Something I was reading
made me consider my
attitude to diabetes. I've
read about diabetes
burnout for years - the
idea that the day to day life of living with
diabetes and trying to 'win' on numbers
can lead you pretty much to despair. As
Anton Chekhov once noted, 'Any idiot
can face a crisis, it's the day-to-day living
that wears you out', and he wasn't even
diagnosed with diabetes.
What does give me hope though,
apart from break-throughs (as reported in
the last issue) that mean that greater steps
are being made towards a cure), is that
there are big improvements in diabetes kit
and the way technology is being used to
improve how we live with the condition.
Again as reported in our last issue,
Accu-Chek's new Insight insulin pump will
be becoming available through diabetes
FORWARD TO!
LIVING
clinics early next year. The newest
Medtronic insulin pump, the 640G, will
also be coming out soon. A launch date
is still to be announced, but it's likely to
be the early-to-mid part of 2015. We'll
report more on those as they see the light
of day. In the meantime, here are a few
other updates on improved kit and new
kit coming to us soon.
Virtual clinic
Diasend has actually been around since
2006 and has been used across many
hospital diabetes clinics, as well as by
some patients using it from home. It is a
stand-alone system for easy uploading
of information from most glucose meters,
insulin pumps, CGMs and mobile apps.
However, in a newly-evolved form, it is now
being made much more widely available
for home use and is based on the principle
that simple and effective communication
between care provider and patient is a
prerequisite for the best care.
The Diasend system consolidates
and presents this information in clear and
structured reports, no matter what the
device is or how the data is stored. From
November 2014 patients have been able
to register at www.diasend.com for
free and then upload their data from their
devices. By registering and downloading
the Diasend software people with diabetes
were then able to view their data and
share it with their healthcare professional
(HCP), if they want to. For this the clinic
must have a Diasend account; if it does
not, home users can print out the reports
and take into clinic when they next visit.
The people behind Diasend are
currently working on integrating mobile
Apps into the system. Their aim is that
An example screen from Diasend software showing CGM data over
a 12-day period, with patterns and averages.
continued over