I hereby interrupt my vacation to bring you some exciting diabetes technology news. Some of you may know that the American Association of Diabetes Educators (AADE) is holding its annual conference in Atlanta on Aug. 5-8.  This event takes a close second to the ADA’s big annual shindig in June as the biggest event of the year for launching new diabetes products and programs.

Some cool stuff being officially unveiled next week:

* A new competitor to OmniPod,the Solo™ MicroPump Insulin Delivery System from Israel-based Medingo, which has just received FDA 510(k) clearance.

According to the Medingo web site the “The Solo Insulin Dispensing Patch is the smallest, thinnest, lightest, most discreet insulin pump without cumbersome tubing…

“The Solo System has two parts: a miniature insulin dispensing patch and a remote control, which allows you to completely personalize and guide your patch for your body’s insulin needs.”

I have seen a prototype of this product and it looks pretty darn cool. Two advantages over the OmniPod are:

1) the ability to disconnect for short periods without wasting a pod/losing your insulin.  The patch has a “bed” that remains on your skin so you can take off the insulin pod and later re-attach it.

and

2) the ability to bolus with patch buttons, even if your remote is not handy. In other words, there are two buttons on the side of the insulin pod (patch, whatever) that you squeeze a few times in unison in order to dose unit by unit. So no worries if you forget your remote controller.

Watch for the launch of the company’s new website www.solo4you.com on August 4^th for additional info.

* The WaveSense Diabetes Manager™ iPhone/iPod Touch app, which has been submitted to Apple and will be demonstrated to diabetes educators at the AADE show. The company says they don’t know exactly when Apple will make it available on iTunes, “but we’ll provide an update as soon as it’s approved.”

This first-generation app is essentially a “digital logbook,” they tell me. “You can enter glucose, carb, and insulin data, just like you would with a paper log book. However, the app puts everything into a clean format, helps you add tags and notes to your results, and utilizes the data capabilities of the iPhone to share info with your healthcare team or family. The next version is in progress and automates transferring data to the app.”

And they’re not just trying to be trendy creating an iPhone app either, they say. While features like test time, sample size, and coding are “basically solved problems” in glucose testing, WaveSense is focusing on the final frontiers: improving accuracy, reducing costs, and providing tools to make diabetes information more useful, i.e. mobile apps for easy data management and connectivity.

I have seen a prototype of this product as well. It’s very appealing and uses the same type of scroll technology as say, Tipulator, and other popular iPhone tools. So yes, it’s still manual data entry, but with a useful twist.

If you’re interested, the company is actively seeking patient input to make the app more useful.  They’re encouraging people to get in touch via http://www.wavesense.info/iphone

No doubt next week will bring many more updates and announcements surrounding the AADE event, so keep your Google Alerts up-to-date, and keep your eyes peeled

Thursday, July 30th, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (6)