I wanted to bring a couple of survey opportunities to your attention. These both relate directly to fine tuning a new model of care for people with diabetes so your vote counts! One is about how long have you worn your continuous monitoring system at CGMSCENTRAL.COM and the other relates to getting at the true cost of caring for one’s health located at MYGLUCO.COM

These polls are still open so please click and vote soon. Thanks for your time.

To sum it up from my perspective, we saw an increase in the importance of accuracy and automation in the tools we use to manage this disease albeit only a few thousand people have experienced these advances so far:

• we saw several new meters come to market that build calibration codes into the test strips themselves to ensure that the meter is adjusting its interpretation of the glucose levels appropriately.
• we launched HomeCheck-A1c; the world’s most accurate A1c test and the only one that checks the sample to make sure it’s clear of interference before we determine the A1c level.
• continuous glucose monitoring systems came of age this past year as thousands of people are now using either the Medtronic or DexCom sensors. Accuracy for these new systems is relative since it’s based on calibration to a loosely calibrated glucose meter. Error on error begets error. However, managing in real-time in line with current trends is a huge change in managing blood sugar. Healthcare providers will struggle to keep up with their patients who elect to use this new tool.
• results from clinical trials using our GlucoMON® including real-time alerts from our automated diabetes management system (ADMS™) were presented at this Summer’s ADA Scientific Sessions. We demonstrated that diabetes education can be effectively delivered as part of an automated cycle of care as an adjunct to training provided by skilled diabetes personnel. A1c levels were reduced by more than 1 full point overall as well as significant reductions in the incidence of hypoglycemia and extended excursions of hyperglycemia.
• at this year’s Diabetes Technology Society’s annual meeting in San Francisco, our clinical trial partners at Texas Children’s Hospital showed that providers can deliver care more efficiently with significantly improved outcomes when they work with patients using our ADMS vs patients in the control group via conventional care.
• cgmscentral.com went live on the Web as the only site dedicated to helping people secure reimbursement for their continuous glucose monitoring systems.
• remote patient care including quarterly visits with the endocrinologist can be effectively delivered via residential quality broadband video conferencing plus our HomeCheck programs for reliable and accurate diagnostic testing, data collection, analysis and feedback. Steve Ponder (endo and CDE) accomplished this feat in November. I’m not sure who was more excited - Steve or his patient family who is used to traveling over 200 miles one way but now only once a year instead of 4 times.
• my daughter got her pink pump! Based on her enthusiasm, I guess custom colors are a good thing, too.
• we successfully concluded Beta testing of our GSM/GPRS portable wireless appliance version of the GlucoMON in preparation for general availability of our GlucoMON-RT program in January ‘08. Including certification of the device, we also upgraded our operational infrastructure in advance of supporting several thousand subscribers in 2008.

What does 2008 hold for us?

My crystal ball has never worked on time and seems to be off by varying degrees depending on the relative humidity at the time of the prediction. So, I’ll just say that I think 2008 is a year of coming together. Too much of diabetes care lives in silos; be it the way that providers deliver care or the various tools that we use. This coming year we’ll make great progress simplifying ‘day in the life of’ scenarios and expanding the numbers of people experiencing this new found simplicity. What’s not to like about that? Let’s hope we see continued progress toward a cure as well.

In 2008, Challenge Diabetes is adding several more authors as a reflection of our focus on the need for integrated diabetes care. Let me know if there are other topics that you would like to see addressed here.

All my best.

It was bound to happen. I knew it was only a matter of time and today was the day. I’m talking about sitting in a Starbucks prepared to pay my $9.95 ransom charge to hop on their access point so that I could do some email w file attachments no doubt in the midst of a several hundred mile trek through Texas. Almost the moment I turned on my laptop I was connected to (linksys) - Excellent (connection quality that is). Naturally intrigued, I searched for all available wireless network access points and sure enough the friendly t-mobile service was there and waiting.

So, I feel pretty confident in saying that the days of paying for broadband access are numbered. How much longer can Starbucks take the hit for charging due to some ancient contract they did w T-Mobile so many eons ago (in Internet years anyway)?

I could go on about how this impacts medical data and patient care… yada yada… but I think sharing my newfound ‘freedom of information access’ experience today of free Wi-Fi in a normally hostile environment is plenty all by itself!

And if my experience isn’t enough for you, link to the rest of the story to learn about Starbucks partnership w Apple and their iTunes service which, you guessed it, doesn’t require you to pay for access via T-Mobile.