Sayer Again Teases Apple Watch Integration

Kevin Sayer, CEO of Dexcom, apparently is committed to making Dexcom to Apple Watch a reality.

I’m not holding my breath…

https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2019/06/13/dexcom-ceo-teases-apple-watch-diabetes-collaboration.html

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Thanks for posting this, Doc.

“Committed” huh. I’ll believe it when I see it, as this has been teased as a possibility for a few years now.

@TiaG I meant to use the /s tag after that sentence.

When this started being talked about two or three years ago I was going to switch from Android to Apple to take advantage of it. It was shortly thereafter that I found xDrip+ and got my uber cheap Sony SW3.

I never looked back. When the Dexcom to Apple Watch becomes a reality, I’ll be happy for other people. But I will say to Dexcom to take their watch capable transmitter and shove it where the sun don’t shine.

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Dexcom can’t even get the iwatch to show data in a timely manner. The G6 has long delays where the iwatch doesn’t get refreshed. They say nothing of this, and this is a huge issue because within these 15-30 min refresh delays you could have a serious low on your hands. Most end up using the calendar function with sugar mate to get quicker refreshes. what would be even nicer is apple allowed Dexcom to have their own watchface as well and had real time refreshing of data. Dexcom G6 though lately has cost me a lot of time,money, pain, energy because of their product failing on me. Whoever is in charge of their QC should be fired immediately. Whoever is in charge of their software should also be fired. XDrip+ done by a few independent programmers is vastly better than the software this multi billion dollar valued company has, i would be ashamed if i was in charge of software there.

@SFBob In all fairness, JamOrHam does not need the permission of the FDA to make even a small change in his code. I am not offering this as any kind of excuse for Dexcom, they have certainly not put the funding into the wishes of their retail customers lately.

I have used a Dexcom every day for the last 14 years ( about 2 weeks before the STS3 was first released). I commiserate with your G6 complaints. But Dexcom has become a large company where the bottom line is the most important thing. Andy Rasdel, their CEO in 2006, set the customer relations tone for the company. Kevin Sayer, the current CEO, is setting the investor tone for the company.

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Sayer is a miserable CEO for actual operations and delivery. His sales smoke up investors’ backsides has run out of steam. Dexcom has so many delivery problems and I use that term in operational sense, but yep, even getting product out the door delivered is failing. Alphabet/Google and Apple are two large investors in Dexcom. I think he’s trying to shove them off center and start a bidding contest.

However, inside industry experts don’t think very much of Sayer, so any full buy out by either company would need to see him go day one. Perhaps his personal buyout price is too high, because both of these companies have more cash than most of the world’s economies combined. :smile:

Here’s a revealing interview where he says that Dexcom can’t fight their way out of a wet paper bag. Great research company, yes! But they can’t deliver because they have extremely poor executive management.

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XDrip+ done by a few independent programmers is vastly better than the software [Dexcom] has

How difficult can it possibly be to put it on the Apple Watch? (the display of the BG data, not necessarily the data entry) It would seem to be literally be only rendering the graph and arrow in a special view, and sending that to the Apple Watch display. (I don’t know how the WatchOS SDK works, so this might be simplified.) The data entry - that would take development of a watch-specific interface that’s “easy enough” for the FDA (I’m guessing they wouldn’t like the Digital Crown because it would be “easy to make mistakes”), data entry, QA testing, etc.

That is, unless they want to make a no-phone solution with the transmitter and the watch communicating directly. That’s probably more complicated. Again, I don’t know how “easily” a iOS app can be “dump re-compiled” for watchOS (again, only the BG view.

Damn, does this mean that me and my endo might have to find another CGM system (which other ones are there?) soon if Dex goes belly-up?

Yes.
This is about the Dexcom transmitter sending directly to the Apple Watch without having to relay the signal through the iPhone.