Top Six Highlights from the Diabetes Mine D-Data Exchange and Innovation Summit

Twitter summary: #DBminesummit brings together top minds to discuss innovations in #diabetes – top 6 highlights below, full report coming soon!

This past week, our team was fortunate to attend the DiabetesMine D-Data Exchange and Innovation Summit – two days that gather some of the brightest minds in diabetes technology to discuss ways to further innovations in diabetes. We will be writing an in-depth overview of the summary in a future conference pearls, but for now we wanted to share our top six highlights from the two days:

1. Amy Tenderich from DiabetesMine set the stage, noting the incredible momentum in the diabetes community that has helped lead to a “tipping point” of diabetes innovation. Ms. Tenderich also commented on the FDA’s progress in diabetes, saying that the FDA “has gone from zero to hero in this community.”

2. Dr. Edward Damiano gave an excellent presentation on the latest from the bionic pancreas, addressing some of the biggest criticisms of the bionic pancreas system. For example, in regards to infusion set failures, Dr. Damiano explained that infusion failures result in alarms when the CGM glucose readings rise or fall too quickly or go too high or low. Additionally, if a glucagon infusion failure is detected, the bionic pancreas automatically raises its target glucose level until the situation is fixed.

3. Kelly Close (Founder, The diaTribe Foundation) led an inspiring panel discussion on patient engagement, featuring diabetes all-stars like Manny Hernandez, Rebecca Killion, and Dr. Bill Polonsky, among others. Ms. Killion summed up the panel well in her comment, “The experts on diabetes are the people with diabetes. There is power there. We need to use it. We have so much power!”

4. Dr. Stayce Beck, the FDA’s Branch Chief for Diagnostic Devices, gave a very optimistic presentation on the FDA’s efforts in three specific areas of diabetes: safer test strips, device interoperability, and greater patient input. The tone of her presentation was patient-centered and hopeful, one we’ve been ecstatic to see again and again in the past month from the FDA. Dr. Beck called the November 3 #DOCaskaFDA meeting “really really successful – so successful that it shut down the FDA system.” What a win for the Diabetes Online Community (DOC)!

5. Richard Wood of market research company dQ&A gave a presentation on key findings from recent dQ&A patient surveys, including research on diabetes stigma. Mr. Wood’s presentation highlighted the reality of the patient experience with current diabetes technologies. For example, 54% of people on insulin pumps and 39% of people on CGMs do not download data, citing barriers such as time, complicated software, excess cables, and Apple incompatibility as major constraints.

6. Nightscout’s #WeAreNotWaiting campaign on increasing the ability of different diabetes devices to “talk” to each other got a lot of emphasis at the meeting. The CGM in the Cloud Facebook group just passed the 8,500 member mark, and the group is continually committed to easing the burden of diabetes management. -AJW/AB