Bigfoot Biomedical: for real or dying on the vine?

Tips, Tech & Gear Pump
21

@mikep, I would very much like to know a few things if they are open to discussing them:

  • What is their latest thought on when they will have a product for sale?

  • Are they still aiming for a closed loop product, controlled from a phone, with a Snap pump and a Libre sensor?

  • Will that be the configuration they release right away, or something to come after first release?

  • Is their comm protocol to the pump going to be opensource?

Totally understand if they are not willing to publicly discuss.

1 Like
22

Great opportunity and great questions @Michel, @mikep

You may want to soften or reformulate this question a bit. It does not matter if their code is open source or not. Most likely, no D-Tech company will ever have an open-source solution. Comm to the pump should be robust and secure, encrypted - that’s all great. What matters is whether a user (or a 3rd party, with user’s permission) could have ideally unrestricted (but secure, password protected) access to own CGM data, pump data, and pump functionalities. That’s all we are looking for. So, instead of asking about “open source” I’d ask: “will their comm protocol to the pump be accessible by the user, and will it allow interoperability with other D-tech devices and systems.”

3 Likes
23

@dm61 is right - his is a much better approach.

24

I watched a video of an FDA person at a diabetes tech conference that was posted by one of the Nightscout people.

The FDA person was telling the developers - we want you to figure out this interoperability thing so that the FDA could just approve something like an APS algorthim and have it work with all types of pumps without having to do a complete approval of a new pump. The idea would be the pump would be approved to operate with a “APS algorithm” or a “CGM” and then you could just swap out the algorithms or the CGMs without needed to approve the whole pump.

It sounded pretty awesome - but I don’t think Medtronic would be open to that :laughing:

Perhaps bigfoot would be.

1 Like
25

I just happened across an article from 3/28/18 that Abbot has purchased a stake in Bigfoot. https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/28/abbott-invests-in-diabetes-care-start-up-bigfoot-biomedical.html

Previously we learned that Bigfoot had switched from Dex to the Libre for their hybrid closed-loop project, but now it seems that Abbot is directly investing. According to the article Bigfoot still needs to raise a bunch more money for the clinical trials, but this news does help their chance of success.

1 Like