We’re very proud of our little Stevie as he is getting ready to present the inaugural Webinar to over 300 diabetes educators via the J&J Diabetes Institute. They initially had 200 slots and those were gone in less than 48 hours. So, they added 100 more. I just looked and those are all gone now, too.

From the JJDI site:

Tapping into the Social Side of Blood Glucose Monitoring
Friday, January 22, 2010
9:00 AM - 9:45 AM (Americas) Pacific Time (US & Canada)

In Tapping into the Social Side of Blood Glucose Monitoring, Dr. Stephen Ponder will lead an energetic discussion about the role of the diabetes provider in SMBG and will also cover innovative communication methods to encourage appropriate testing with your diabetes patients. In this Webinar, you will get the chance to learn and participate in the discussion about a variety of topics, including: how to navigate the challenges to effective SMBG and how Dr. Ponder and other diabetes healthcare professionals approach the challenge of identifying creative ways to help patients understand the value of testing.

Presenter: Stephen W. Ponder, MD, FAAP, CDE, Johnson & Johnson Diabetes Institute Faculty

There is no more space available in this event.

I really love that Steve gets this opportunity to share his experiences with others. Hopefully at least a few of those hundreds are there to actually learn and change the way they help patients.

Did you attend? What did you learn? How will this new knowledge affect the way you work with your patients?

Shortly after my daughter was diagnosed in 2001 I learned about the juvenile diabetes research foundation and the great work they had been doing to find a cure for her diabetes. Over the years I held hope that their investments in promising research done by trail-blazing scientists would pan out before she became an adult and had to deal with the potentially deadly effects of low blood sugar at night and awful complications from high blood sugar over time.

Through the course of the past 8 years I have gradually stopped trying to figure out how to get JDRF involved in the innovative research that I’ve had a hand in. My research has been focused on the here and now - lower hanging fruit for sure vs a cure found in the lab. In addition, mine is a commercial venture focused on helping people to more easily manage with the help of information technology in the form of wireless devices and some pretty slick software.

It’s taken a few $million to get here from a combination of credit cards, friends and family and the ability to win several competitive research grants from federal agencies and lesser known medical research foundations. We recently announced preliminary results from our most rigorous scientific study that showed how our technology, in the hands of patients, provides a clinically significant benefit vs. the current standard of care (ie - a full point reduction in A1c and reductions in glycemic variability all without the dependency on additional visits to the clinic or participation by their medical providers). A subsequent peer review and publication will be the final judge but I can already say that we now know a few special things that can be done today at very low cost to have a significant impact on reducing complications from type 1 diabetes.

I used to think this goal was something I had in common with the JDRF and always struggled with the fact that there has never been a constructive dialogue with them - only my pleadings and attempts to share what I have been learning along the way. Nothing ever came out of those discussions - absolutely nothing. Yet, the data shows that Diabetech and our research partners have the stuff that mitigates complications and makes life with diabetes easier for all concerned.

In light of JDRF’s recently accelerated behavior as some kind of new wave Robin Hood who takes donations from families who walk for a cure and gives millions to large multi-national corporations, I have to wonder if they are now my competitor? I also wonder if this precedent will stifle a company’s future willingness to fund R&D out of their own pocket when they know there is this JDRF bankroll in the wings? What about new investments into this field that don’t involve JDRF? It seems like that just got riskier too since your new fledgling project might find itself up against a giant waving the JDRF banner. So did they just monopolize innovation regarding diabetes technology?

Weird.

Some healthy reading over at Journal of Diabetes, Science and Technology that opens for discussion one man made barrier to accomplishing not only the artificial pancreas but also many of the step wise advancements that might be discovered along the way. This article begs an answer from JDRF as to how they plan to clear these roadblocks. Hopefully they won’t be spending more millions buying up patent licenses or implementing inferior workarounds. Otherwise their first millions may be a waste of money and could easily require a lot more than what is on the table at present. After all, if JDRF is ready with the cash what incentive is there for the for profit entities (assuming there will be more partnerships like this in the future) to fork over the dough?

From the article, this diagram below shows just how many patents are in play around a closed loop artificial pancreas.

Figure 2. Number of U.S. Patents filed per year related to closed-loop glucose control systems obtained by searching for the terms “closed loop”, “glucose control,” “artificial pancreas,” and “diabetes” combined with the most relevant IPC classes (A61M, A61B, and G01N). Similar terms were considered (e.g., “close” instead of “closed”, or “analyte” instead of “glucose”).

Download the full article from the Journal of Diabetes, Science and Technology website here