Diabetes Technology Society Meeting on September 9 to Discuss Performance of Blood Glucose Monitors Following FDA Clearance
By Adam Brown
On September 9, the Diabetes Technology Society (DTS) will hold a meeting in Bethesda, Maryland, to discuss higher standards for blood glucose monitors and strips, with a focus on how to better monitor the accuracy of these products once they reach the market. The FDA will have a significant presence at the meeting, as will the largest blood glucose meter manufacturers (Abbott, Bayer, LifeScan, Nova Biomedical, Roche, and Sanofi) and organizations like the American Diabetes Association, JDRF, and the American Association of Diabetes Educators. Those interested can view the complete agenda here.
As part of the meeting, the Diabetes Technology Society will present its idea for a Blood Glucose Monitoring Program, followed by FDA’s feedback on the proposal. Glucose test strips are currently only tested for accuracy and reliability before approval, and these tests are done by the manufacturers themselves. The new DTS Program will hopefully propose a system for testing the accuracy of strips on an ongoing basis, ensuring that strips maintain their quality following FDA clearance. This is critically needed, as an earlier DTS meeting in May highlighted that about a third of currently available strips and meters do not meet the approved standards for accuracy when used in real-life conditions. diaTribe will be there covering all the most important updates for patients, and we hope that the meeting offers some realistic solutions and clearly lays out the next steps.
There has been lots of interest in this meeting on the patient end from the Strip Safely campaign – the movement recently organized a “tweet-in” where members of the diabetes community used social media to draw attention to meter and strip safety. The FDA’s official twitter feed received 1,500 tweets on a single evening, and the event reached out to many U.S. congresspersons – including Senator Majority Leader Harry Reid, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, and Senators Jeanne Shaheen and Susan Collins (co-chairs of the Senate Diabetes Caucus). You can view all the tweets by searching #StripSafely on twitter. We’re glad to see so much patient activism on this critical issue and hope it continues following the September 9 meeting. –AB/AW
