In rural New Jersey, while attending the Walk-a-Thon to support Camp Nejeda, a diabetes summer camp and year-round educational center for children and teenagers with diabetes and their families (full disclosure: my son has attended the summer camp for many years), I had the opportunity to learn a little more about some incredible cutting edge products and services that support families and patients living with blood sugar disorders. In addition to the Walk-a-Thon there were vendor tables where family members could visit with individuals who work on training and/or development for these companies.
An issue of great concern to families dealing with congenital hyperinsulinism is monitoring blood sugar levels at night and in this blog post I’m focusing on what these companies have to offer in the way of glucose monitoring, which is so very important at night. Ideally, parents should get a full night sleep to have the strength and energy to care for their children during the day. Waking up in the middle of the night to check blood sugar levels is far from ideal. For that reason parents are turning to sensors more and more to assist in monitoring blood sugar levels.
Raymond Fowlie, a hero at Camp Nejeda because he is the much loved former Director of Nursing is now clinical manager at Animas. He guided me through the Animas products showing me the One Touch Ping insulin pump and its features. Many patients are using this pump in conjunction with the Dexcom SEVEN continuous glucose monitor (CGM). One of the advantages of the Dexcom Seven according to Raymond is that the sensor is FDA approved for a full week of care. Another point in favor of this CGM is that the JDRF has chosen to partner with Animas on the development of the artificial pancreas which is in partnership with Dexcom. This suggests that leading researchers in the field of artificial pancreas development consider the Dexcom to be an excellent CGM.
Next I visited the Medtronic table. Unfortunately, it wasn’t manned when I visited, but I was able to look over the literature on mySentry, the first remote glucose monitor. This is an outstanding tool that allows parents to monitor the blood sugar levels of their children from the comfort of their bed. Parents can view the CGM status on the mySentry screen including glucose levels and trends. Low glucose alert alarms can be set to wake parents when an intervention is needed. This feature allows parents to sleep through the night waking up only on nights when the blood sugar level is low. The mySentry system is used in conjunction with the MiniMed Paradign REAL-time Revel System.
Some parents are concerned about the reliability of sensors at the lower blood sugar levels and fear that these sensors may fail to pick up on some hypoglycemic events. For that reason, these parents are looking into other options. One option of considerable interest to some of these HI parents is service dogs. There are some who believe hypo alert dogs are even more reliable than a sensor and there is at least one family in the HI community that now has a hypo alert dog, and others who are raising funds for a dog.
At Camp Nejeda I spoke with Pamela Morgan of Novo Nordisk about hypo alert dogs. I even got to meet some dogs in training. Pamela is very excited about the role these dogs are playing in the lives of patients who are not aware of low glucose levels. She does say, however, there is very little that is understood about why these dogs have this ability. She believes more research into the effectiveness and accuracy of the dog’s sensing powers would be very useful. In addition to the sensing power of the dogs, there is also the issue of how the dog communicates the information about hypoglycemia to the patient or patient’s family. Pamela told me about a unique partnership between Canine Partners for Life (CPL), a dog training and provider
service, and Novo Nordisk. Novo Nordisk has awarded a grant to CPL to engage in research on this phenomenon. We look forward to the results of this study and other studies which will quantify this canine ability.
In the coming weeks I will share more information about these new products and services. One of the most exciting aspects of reporting on this is how quickly new products and services are now developed. The time between breakthroughs continues to get shorter and shorter, much to the benefit of our HI families.
