Low alert repeat increment on touchscreen G5?

[mwashburn]

Hi All-
I received a G5 touchscreen last week but decided not to use it since I couldn’t see any advantages over the push button G5. I’m about to give Dexcom feedback on it and the G5 mobile app. I have a question for someone that’s actively using the touchscreen G5, which is whether the time increment for repeating low alerts is still set at 15 minutes? To me, that’s too long and I think that 5 minute increments would have been much more appropriate. It seems that a new device would have been a great opportunity to change the value. It seems that non-diabetic programmers, engineers and market research people had a lot of input on the G5 hardware and software. If anyone has anything else they’d like me to relay to Dexcom customer service, please let me know. Thanks.
Mark

[Eric]

@mwashburn

I have a question for someone that’s actively using the touchscreen G5, which is whether the time increment for repeating low alerts is still set at 15 minutes? To me, that’s too long and I think that 5 minute increments would have been much more appropriate.

I know it won’t allow you to have a 5 minute increment, but the old push-button will alert every 5 minutes as long as you don’t turn it off. Is the new one different?

Funny, I still haven’t seen anyone who likes the new one better than the old. Glad I bought the spare old one.

[Michel]

@Eric

Glad I bought the spare old one.

I did too

[mwashburn]

Because I received the new G5 but decided not to use it, I too would like to buy a push button G5 on eBay or Craigslist (or from someone on this forum). My push button G5 goes from 0 to 15, 30, 45… minutes for the low alert increment. Since I try to stay above the “urgent low” level (55 mg/dL), I can’t say offhand if the increments at 5 minute intervals. I would hope that it wouldn’t be difficult to change the low alert level increment from 15 to 5 or 10 minutes in the G5 mobile app.

I wish Dexcom had held an open in-person forum for G5 users to describe what they would have wanted on the touchscreen G5 (e.g., a display that rotates based on the orientation of the device). Since I live in San Diego, I would have been glad to drive 20 or 25 miles to give them a user’s input. They also could have solicited comments from any of the many online forums.

[Eric]

@mwashburn

If anyone has anything else they’d like me to relay to Dexcom customer service, please let me know. Thanks.

Mark,

The thought has come up before that Dexcom has no interest in making the receiver any better for anyone because they don’t make significant money on the receivers, only on the sensors. Just like a razor blade company makes all their money on the blades not the handles.

The quotes below are from Dexcom’s CEO and COO and were compiled by @Thomas.

Thomas is pretty savvy about Dex’s business strategies and I agree with Thomas - they don’t want to make it better, they just want to be able to manufacture it more cheaply than previous versions and reduce the cost associated with people returning defective units. All these quotes seem to back that believe.

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[various conferences and interviews with Dex’s top bosses:]

It’s also worth noting that with our receiver optional configuration, more international patients are choosing to go direct to their phones and not purchasing a receiver. By driving down the upfront cost of CGM, we are seeing a very nice uptick in demand.

Q: And then the second question is on FDA. Based on everything we’ve talked about in terms of the evolving environment, what’s the outlook for you removing the current requirement in the U.S. to sell a receiver to all new patients? Thank you.

A: With respect to the receiver requirement, that really is going to require additional filing for us. And the thing that we’re concerned about or contemplating there as we do that, we don’t want to mess up our Medicare label, which requires for receiver to have DME coverage. So we have to balance those two things and we will do that.

In the Nordics, where it’s a tender process and everything is paid for kind of from the overall general budget, one of the things that’s been very successful is our campaign to eliminate the receiver from the original purchase.

We did launch a new receiver this quarter. And while the actual cost profile on it to build it isn’t any higher, we believe the warranty return rates on it will be much less significant. And that will ultimately save us costs.

On the durable side, we note that receiver sales continue to be less significant component of our overall revenue as patients increasingly rely on their smartphones.

And look, we decided to break out components of hardware just to, what you guys know, that receivers are becoming a much smaller component of the overall hardware mix anyway.

So I don’t know that the receiver, even as of last year, was not a significant contributor.

But in Europe we have a configuration that does go straight to the phone that doesn’t demand the receiver. And the majority of our new patients in Europe, quite frankly, are not buying receivers. They are buying the transmitter and the sensors. And it’s reimbursed that way in Europe, so we’re doing very well with that configuration.

I think over time the FDA, we could go directly to the phone and we could file that configuration and do it. For Medicare right now, since we have the receiver, we continue to sell it and have it part of the system.

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So for all of us who use the receivers, it’s not great news. We are going to have to deal with crappy receivers, or start using the phone…

Credit to Thomas for finding all of these quotes.

[mwashburn]

Eric,
Thanks for relaying Thomas’ insights on Dexcom’s business model. It sucks for me since I don’t always have my cell phone on me and got used to having the G4/G5 hanging from my belt where just a look down would give me a BG reading. I may ultimately have my phone on me at all times.
I’ll let you and the forum know if I hear anything interesting back from Dexcom customer service regarding the G5 touchscreen and what I feel are shortcomings in the hardware and the Android app. If management doesn’t care about much beyond the stock value, then I doubt that customer service will be emotionally invested in the software/hardware.

[Eric]

Ultimately a lot of people will be going the Apple watch display route I think.