By
AmyT on
April 14, 2010
I’m sure many of you heard the news yesterday that Roche Diabetes has acquired Israel-based Medingo, makers of the much-anticipated Solo insulin patch pump — a would-be direct competitor to the OmniPod tubeless pumping system.
Roche paid $160 million for the small company and its technology, which is a drop in the bucket in industry terms. The press release predicts “worldwide availability by 2012.”
In case you’re wondering, the Solo system already had an integrated…
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By
AmyT on
October 26, 2009
We tend to assume that the big companies making glucose monitoring products do nothing but sit around thinking about how they can sell more product. You can’t blame us; it sure looks that way from the outside. But late last week I was privileged to get an inside view of some of the real innovation going on behind closed doors.
I was invited to visit Roche’s New Concept Incubator, a small “think tank” of about…
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As the Diabetes Social Media Summit hosted by Roche approaches, I’ve been thinking and reading a lot about the question of Pharma engagement here. Is Social Media destined to be just another forum for them to push marketing mantras and build brands? Or can there really be valuable two-way interaction between the chronically drug-dependent (us PWDs, for example) and the industry that sells us our meds?
A whole lot of blogosphere debate is going on,…
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By
AmyT on
April 29, 2009
We bloggers and social network afficionados have been calling for the medical establishment to wake up and smell the Java, and recognize that we patients have a new place to congregate and a new communal voice on the web. Why don’t they recognize us and engage with us, we ask?
Well now I know that at least one big Pharma company producing glucose meters and pumps is listening. Not only listening, but they’d like to…
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By
AmyT on
March 19, 2009
It may or may not surprise you to know that lots of people with diabetes don’t really know how to use their glucose meters. By that I mean they were never given a good explanation of when test to test or why. Naturally this refers mostly to folks not on insulin (because taking insulin generally makes testing a do-or-die affair).
But there are a shocking number of Type 2 diabetics out there who were truly…
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