UnitedHealthcare reached an agreement with Medtronic to become the preferred, in-network durable medical equipment (DME) provider of insulin pumps, effective July 1, 2016.
For kids and teenagers living with type 1 diabetes, it can be hard to find the resources and communities that click for them, as many sites are understandably geared toward their parents. Facing a new diagnosis, it’s especially scary for kids, and they might have questions that are different from the ones their parents have.
One of the beautiful peculiarities of the UnConference is the way in which, by the end, we couldn’t have told you who had which type of diabetes. My fellow facilitators Stephen Shaul, Anna and Mike Norton, Dr. Nicole Bereolos, Kate Cornell, Moira McCarthy Stanford, Dr. Jill Weissberg-Benchell, and Bennet Dunlap impressed me with their empathetic responses to people's contributions...
86 million people in the U.S. have prediabetes, but 90% of them don’t know they have it. 30% of these individuals will transition to type 2 diabetes. Type 2 diabetes is potentially preventable. Not progressing to type 2 diabetes is far better than being a well-controlled person with type 2.
I will never forget the story I heard from Life for a Child several years ago about the children who stood at the end of a village road waiting for insulin to arrive from aid workers, crying when a vial fell to the ground and shattered. I weep when I think of those little ones watching that hope and hopelessness pool into the cracks of the dry earth.
Bigfoot’s goal is to make pump-sensor therapy simpler than the pump companies before them have. They envision themselves as a service provider rather than a hardware or device company. Their service will be to “do a better job delivering insulin,” automating your between-meal insulin therapy, the communication between your pump and your Dexcom CGM, even so far as serving as a single point of contact for all of your supply and prescription inventory management, sending you supplies when you need them, “connecting everything, making it intuitive,” says Brewer.
diabetic - [old English] a term once used to describe people with diabetes
diameter – the distance travelled by a person with diabetes to reach his or her glucose meter
dialate - when you're late for work because of an eye exam
Lucas doesn’t see Beyond Type 1 as a traditional diabetes nonprofit, but more like a seed-funded tech startup, as they have the luxury of having been completely self-funded. She says they are “taking the lessons from Silicon Valley and applying them to a nonprofit.”
While we will not see a true artificial pancreas - a closed-loop insulin pump and continuous glucose monitoring system - come to market in 2016, we are so close we can artificially taste it.
Another insulin coming to us in 2016 is Lilly’s new basal insulin, Basaglar – a form of insulin glargine (which you may recognize if you’re familiar with Lantus). FDA approved it just this week after a patent dispute was finally resolved with Sanofi.