iBGStar meter now on sale at Walgreens and Apple

I expect that this meter will be very popular, as it will allow people with diabetes to automatically record their glucose values on their iPhones, eliminating the arduous task of manual entry.  I would love to hear from patients who are planning on using one or have already tried one about their experiences with them.

They will be sold not only at Walgreens but also the Apple store, which is proof about the growing and profound connection between consumer technology and healthcare.  People want their healthcare devices to be designed just as elegantly as they want their smartphone or laptop or speakers designed.  I’m hopeful that the days of unusable, obtuse healthcare devices will soon be behind us.

See here for story from mobihealthnews and here is a review of the meter from a person with diabetes who writes a blog named “DiabeticallyYours.”

Exciting news: Semi-Finalist in Sanofi Data Design Diabetes Innovation Challenge

See the press release here from Fast Company and also announcement on Sanofi’s competition’s blog.  Our team is comprised of Saleh Adi, Yao Sun, Jenise Wong, and I, all physicians at UCSF.  I’m sure I speak for our whole team when I say that we are thrilled, humbled, and honored to be moving on in the competition.  Congratulations as well to the other semi-finalists.  It is great to be a part so many wonderful innovators around the US and the world trying to move diabetes care forward.

Sanofi 2012 Data Design Diabetes Innovation Challenge

The deadline for submissions to the 2012 Data Design Diabetes Innovation Challenge is March 23rd.

This is an opportunity for innovative new designs and uses of data in diabetes to get mentorship and funding while driving towards a final product.  The winner will ultimately be awarded $100,000 to help develop their idea.

The criteria that will be used to judge a winner are:

• Ability to improve the outcomes and/or experience of people living with diabetes in the US.
• Ability to improve the quality and effectiveness of diabetes care in the US.
• Ability to improve the delivery of diabetes care in order to provide the most appropriate intervention at the right time.
• Ability to reduce the cost of care without compromising the quality and delivery of care.
• Enable people within the diabetes ecosystem to feel in control.
• Reflect an understanding of how diabetes affects families, not just individuals.
• Support a desire of the diabetes ecosystem to live in a state of overall wellness, and not just symptom mitigation.

These criteria are all important aims, and it will be exciting to see what new ideas come out of this competition.  Last year’s winner was Ginger.io, who “use machine learning and data mining to passively collect and analyze subtle signals of behavior change to better understand users’ social, physical and mental health status.”  The other four semi-finalists from last year are here.

Good luck!

iBGStar turns your iPhone into a glucose meter… on sale in UK now

Still not available in US (though finally FDA approved), but now available in the UK, is the iBGStar from Sanofi.  This device is similar in spirit to the Glooko iPhone connector dongle that I recently wrote about here.

This is a very exciting device because it will allow patients to electronically capture their blood sugars without any extra work.  No more transcribing numbers into a logbook, either a paper one or even a digital logbook.  As soon as you check your blood sugar, the number is already captured into a digital logbook with no extra work.  This device clearly has an advantage over the Glooko solution in that the data is collected in real-time, rather than needing a connection and download the way the Glooko does.  The introduction of real-time data upload brings the possibility of shorter and faster feedback loops between patient and clinician.  There is also no extra hardware to potentially lose, since the extra hardware is your glucometer.  Glooko’s advantage is that it works with many existing glucose meters, so you can get the one covered by your insurance, and still easily digitize the data.  So, they each bring a unique new capability to glucose monitoring that should be welcome.