Comments on: Design Challenge: Insights from Last Year’s Big Winner

By: Diabetes Mine 2010 Design Challenge is Open! « Pharma 2.0

Diabetes Mine 2010 Design Challenge is Open! « Pharma 2.0 — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 23:55:34 +0000

[...] view their submissions, too. This is what your market is looking for. And take note: Samantha Katz, last year’s Grand Prize winner, was actually hired by Medtronic Diabetes to help design [...]

By: AmyT

AmyT — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 22:10:24 +0000

@Brian – don’t know about your first question, but the answer to No. 2 is yes, certainly!

By: Brian Riviere

Brian Riviere — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 12:28:44 +0000

Hello,

Hopefully this means that we will have a smart phone / BG tester on the market soon.

Also are Canadians allowed to take part in this contest?

thanks

Brian Riviere

By: pking

pking — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 07:49:49 +0000

The lifecase idea had a few clever ideas, especially hiding test strips inside the lancing device, but basically it was heavily reliant upon a very unlikely combination of technology: a blood monitor paired with an iphone/smartphone. A close integration between J&J or Medtronic and Apple is unlikely to make financial sense, and the hardware changes too often for the medical companies to even remotely keep up. The overlap between diabetics and iphone owners is another factor that limits the commercial viability. Sure, you could expand to all smartphones rather than just the iphone, but then the hardware/software coordination issues quickly spiral into the impossible range. Med devices could easily overcome many issues by adopting open data standards and utilizing common technology (like bluetooth), but so far I haven’t seen any move in the direction at all. Possibly because allowing 3rd party developers access to their data removes control over how the data is displayed and interpreted… The FDA certainly can’t allow that for safety reasons. It’s still basically impossible to pull useful data out of even the most advanced blood monitors without using proprietary / closed software, which is just going to keep innovation slow to support safety. People who do design for modern devices don’t have to deal with all of the regulation imposed by the FDA (for good reason), which is why we see so much innovation in smartphone apps and online. Its just not the same ballgame when you’re playing with data that actually matters. Hopefully we’ll at least see steady progress, but its going to be decades rather than years to catch up with where we are now.

By: Todd Shirley

Todd Shirley — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 03:52:49 +0000

Hey Samantha

Will anything ever become of your LifeCase/LifeApp idea? It won because it was something that would truly help people. I totally want/need one! Are you or Erik pursuing the idea at all? Is there any hope we will see something like that in the future?

The Medtronic Paradigm Reveal looks like a tiny incremental improvement, which is what we have all gotten used to. When will we something revolutionary like the LifeCase to help diabetics? You have to have 2 probes stuck to your body, a meter, a pump AND THEN something else to log data? REALLY? Not everyone wears cargo pants all the time! Where’s the all-in-one?

Please tell me the LifeCase isn’t dead!

By: Karmel Allison

Karmel Allison — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 21:40:19 +0000

Hi Samantha!

Thanks for sharing your experience; I just got my Minimed CGM (full story here: http://bit.ly/bl1L5Q ), and I am very interested to hear more about what Minimed is developing in terms of hardware and software improvements for the current system– if you’re willing to answer a few questions, can you email me? karmel –at– asweetlife –dot– org

Thanks!
Karmel