AccuChek has just come out with a new Bluetooth connected blood glucose meter that they are offering for no cost, and test strips that are very low cost. They are admittedly reacting to the current high cost of diabetes in an attempt to lower those costs.
I’ll probably get one and try out out.
Did I miss it or was the link to the place you actually need to go to get your free meter/discounted strips from, actually posted in the article?
At $1 per strip, we’d have 5 to 1 savings if we could get test strips for 20 cents per.
I highly recommend the Contour Next. Amazon has the strips at about 20-24 cents, depending on how you buy them. I’ve been very happy with the accuracy and precision.
Here if you buy the 300 count, they are 20 cents per.
We have been using the built in CGM with the Insulet Omnipod…the PDM uses the Freestyle strips that cost us $1 / strip. $10/day (sometimes more, sometimes less)
It appears that there are much more economical routes so we may just start manually entering BG readings after taking the reading from some cheaper system. For us, being that he’s so young, this could result in a lifetime savings (until he’s 18) of thousands of dollars.
Also keep in mind, the next PDM won’t have a builtin BG tester, so you can just go ahead and plan on doing it that way now. Not sure if the next PDM will integrate with certain testers via bluetooth or not.
I’m trying to figure out the benefit of the bluetooth compatability…if it doesn’t feed into our Omnipod PDM it’s really of no use for us (unless we can upload results from the app, directly into the PDM, which I don’t think is going to happen.) What we’d end up doing is checking BG with w/e external meter, then manually inputting the results into the PDM each time we draw blood.
My wife actually just told me (she does all the supply pick-ups) that actually although the test strips are usually $1/strip, we don’t pay a dime for them. Our insurance offers a benefit that if you purchase all 90-day’s worth of supplies at once (everything…lancets, strips, insulin) we only pay $75 total, for everything. We pay for the insulin which costs $75 and all the rest of the supplies are free.
If we purchased everything separately it would be much more expensive, but our insurance has a deal where if we purchase all 90-days worth of supplies, we only have to pay a flat $75.
So I guess we don’t have it that bad after all.
If the next gen PDM is bt compatable with certain meters, when you do a test, it could upload that result into the PDM.
For the current PDM, yes, the bt aspect of a meter is not useful. But I am just looking ahead to the new release and if there is a benefit there.
I’ve been having better luck lately with the $.15c true metrix…
@ClaudnDaye Thanks Harold for getting the correct link in there.
I couldn’t find the size of the blood drop, does anyone know? I like my onetouch verio because the drop is really small, so I rarely miss a reading because there isn’t enough blood. Also I can be at 3.5 depth and it still works.
K, I couldn’ t find it either.
But I did find that pricing is quite a bit higher than what the article said:
I can’t help but wonder how few actual type 1 diabetics who check their bg 10 times a day or more are actually consulted in these design proccessses for meters? There are so few meters available that are even close to what I personally like— tiny, small, integrated with the strip vial, how about a meter built into a decent looking wrist watch? The one touch verio meter my insurance approves is about the size of a deck of cards… the case it comes with is about the size of the Bible. I don’t want to carry this clunker everywhere I go…
I agree with you. I don’t carry around giant D gear, ever.
I made this last year. It’s the best I’ve been able to come up with so far, except for my running meter which has a different setup.
Meter, lancets, and strips, all built into a Timex watchband. I know you are a Rolex guy, but this is the budget version.
I am intrigued by the pricing discrepancy though. It looks like the original article got it wrong?
