I got an email today from the national sales director for Companion Medical, makers of the InPen insulin pen.
They are planning to launch InPen next month.
Seems like a very useful thing for peeps doing MDI.
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This actually looks pretty cool… between increases in bolus delivery technology and improvements in long acting insulins… I still think the path forward in diabetes technology will be parting ways with insulin pumps more and more
I want one. 
I’d use something like this, especially if I ever went back to MDI. One downside is the battery only lasts a year, and it doesn’t say (at least that I could find) if that battery is replaceable. (With the NovoPen 5/Echo the battery isn’t replaceable, but it lasts five years.)
If it’s a prescription device that’s not much of a downside right? They’d be disposable and replaceable based on the battery life I’d have to assume…
Also they might have a monthly fee for the app. Without the app, the pen is just a pen.
Will be interesting to see the pricing.
That’ll be interesting to see if that stands… a monthly fee for the app… I don’t know all the ins and outs, but the most comparable parallels I can think of seem absurd to me—- like Dexcom being an fda approved device, billing your insurance for this fda approved device, then demanding a monthly subscription? That seems outlandish to me.
The parallels I can think of requiring monthly payments; onedrop, livongo etc… are unanimously not covered by insurance—- so I suppose maybe they’ll have to pursue one route or the other? Or maybe my assumptions are just wrong…
I suppose so, though not everyone will have such a cost covered by insurance/government. For me, I just don’t like waste. I refuse to use disposable insulin pens because it makes no sense to me to throw out all that plastic every 300 units when I can use the same pen for years. Ditto with the OmniPod, not sure I could bring myself to use that (although they do supposedly have a recycling program, but still).
If we ever end up in the same city at the same time I’d love to have you over for a K-cup.
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I did have a Keurig for about a year at one point, but got rid of it due to the waste issue. LOL. We have one at work that I occassionally (guiltily) use. I’ll literally carry an empty bottle or paper around in my bag all day until I find a recycling container to stick it in.
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I like The SF roasters eco friendly k-cups. Or you can use the refillable k-cups that you put your own grounds in… but that’s pretty much defeating the perks of it.
I’d celebrate meeting you with a real deal full blown plastic k-cup:)
Hey, I don’t know anything about how they will charge for it. The monthly fee idea was pure speculation on my part. I have no idea.
On the recycling/environmental side note, I toast to both you and @Jen, with a large Styrofoam cup that I filled with a beer I took out of a large Styrofoam cooler, which was filled with glacier ice.
Cheers!
I think that is the Dexcom / Medicare pricing model?
But there’s no monthly fee for Dexcom subscription… every product they offer is fda approved and medically billable, unlike an “app subscription”
I am saying the Dexcom / Medicare pricing model is a monthly subscription approach.
Think we’re talking apples and oranges.
All meds are essentially a “monthly subscription”
None that are approved to be billed to insurance require you to subscribe on the Apple App Store.
All these m new gadgets are really quite compelling–until I try to figure out how I can use them.
It all comes down to the same problem, which is interconnectivity. The InPen is great for automatically recording insulin doses, but you have to manually enter Bg. Dexcom is great for tracking Bg, but you have to manually enter insulin dosage. There are great apps for figuring out carbs in food, but then you have to manually enter the result into whichever tracking app you are using.
Wouldn’t it be far more valuable to have interconnected devices that could be uploaded to a single app to manage the data?
I’m afraid my only hope for the InPen is that the Bluetooth signal can be hacked by the open source community.
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At least there is a record of your doses available to look at if you want to review them. I never recorded any of it with MDI, so this seems helpful. Also you can go back and enter dosing numbers later because the numbers are available, rather than having to enter it right away before you forget. That seems very useful.
There may be some interconnectivity available for all these things some day.
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I wonder if this would still work for us, even as pump users. For instance, maybe I could get my TDD stats more easily than I currently do, simply by having the data tracked in an app.
I will have to look into this…
@Eric @TiaG As soon as the InPen Bluetooth signal is hacked (which I am sure will happen), then xDrip+ will almost be seamlessly integrated with just about all functions.
Right now it obviously automatically tracks the CGM, and it also automatically tracks finger sticks with the Contour Next One.
With the addition of automatic insulin entry the last hurdle would be integration of a food database.
As it stands now xDrip+ gives me all the data I could ever possibly need as long as I manually enter insulin and food.
This is the type of integration that is needed, but I don’t foresee it ever coming from a commercial company.