I was just reading up on Kerri’s recent blog entry and I’m afraid she isn’t that unusual when you look across the broad range of people with diabetes. She’s busy and diabetes tends to take a back seat until something serious comes around.

Here are a few suggestions for Kerri and the millions of people with diabetes like her:

Make sure you never go more than 3 months without getting your A1c.

With our HomeCheck kit you can get the highest quality A1c available in about 3 minutes from home. Just order online and mail it in. Voila - you now have a pretty good idea how things are going (vs last time) and can use that info to nudge yourself in the direction of your friendly neighborhood physician for your regular appointments as needed.

Bernard Farrell did a video review of our HomeCheck and posted it online at his blog here with the video shown below hosted on YouTube:

Find a way to easily track and identify blood sugar trends.

You can use a GlucoMON to automatically handle your logging and generate reports that allow for easy identification of blood glucose trends and to perform pattern analysis.  People who use the GlucoMON say that this only takes them about 1 minute a week with the GlucoMON when it used to take them 1 hour each month before.

And because it’s so easy they are actually managing this information on a weekly basis vs monthly.  Better information leads to better choices. You can read a GlucoMON product review by David Mendosa here and then subscribe or click on the link to his complete review at healthcentral.com

Leverage the power of the diabetes community as you seek reimbursement for new diabetes tools.

If you are going to pursue use of the new continuous glucose monitoring systems, you will most likely need to fight your insurance company to get reimbursed.  Fortunately there is an online resource sponsored by Diabetech called CGMSCENTRAL located at

http://cgmscentral.com  Everyone going after reimbursement one at a time is a very slow process. If there was a way to share information amongst the entire community the process of successfully securing reimbursement will go much faster. To be armed with knowledge is to be armed.

What else do you need to simplify diabetes?

If there are other areas of diabetes care that need simplification you should comment below.  After all, if you want things done you might as well tell someone (Diabetech) who has a track record of delivering a simplified version of diabetes care.

(psssst…. Kerri if you read this give me a call and I can set you up for a trial and see if we can make it easier for you to regain those good habits.)

Check out this very important update on hemoglobinopathies in our midst.  It’s nice to have our HomeCheck-A1c solution validated, finally.  Since our approach includes hemoglobinopathy detection via HPLC-BA as step 1 followed by a second analysis by the most accurate method for determining A1c (HPLC-IE).  HomeCheck delivers the solution to the problem raised by this bulletin which does not offer a clear answer in and of itself.

Read on…

It’s nice when things happen ahead of schedule. Starting this week, HomeCheck is available in select Retail Pharmacies over the counter.

Due to the extreme accuracy and convenience of the HomeCheck-A1c, this hematology test is used to assess blood sugar control by people with diabetes, to determine elevated glucose levels in undiagnosed people with diabetes and those with a condition known as pre-diabetes, and to determine if there is an increased risk for heart attack in the non-diabetic.

Next time you’re in a retail pharmacy, you might look to see if they already carry home diagnostic test kits for cholesterol, etc… The future of testing at home is bright and promises to improve the availability and frequency of critical health feedback, but only if the quality of these tests are high. Fortunately, HomeCheck is here to raise the bar.