Over the past few posts, you've seen me comment about diabetes technology -- mostly hardware and supplies -- in the context of a particular issue (hot weather or availability), but nothing really in terms of what I would like to see healthcare providers do in terms of better using existing technology, as well as what I should like to see pharmaceutical companies, software companies, and device manufacturers develop going forward. Because of the length of my wish list, I'm going to break this up into two posts.

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1.

I was walking into the store as they were walking out (couldn't wait to feel the rush of cold air after walking from my car to the front of the grocery store; 9 p.m. and still 100 degrees outside. Autumn, please?).

I noticed him first: shorter than I am (a lot of people are... I'm 5'10"), muscular, tan skin, seemed confident in himself, attractive, but mostly I noticed the muscular.

She seemed just as confident. I noticed how thin she was and attractive and how short her shorts were.

As we passed I looked forward, but somehow noticed something that made me turn back. Something white. And round. And ... was that... tubing? Yes! An infusion set on the outside of her thigh! I saw it! It was like finding Waldo. Such exhilaration!

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Had he been awake, he probably wouldn’t have appreciated the pink straw in his mouth. But we were out of juice boxes and the box of straws had been picked clean of all its blues and greens.

 

Sounds are louder at 2 am. The trigger snap and pop of the pricker. My bare feet smacking the wood floor. My sloth-like descent down the stairs and the familiar creaks in the wood that groan under my weight.

 

I don’t need to tell you. You know.

 

His eyelids bend open just slightly and quiver like closed moth wings. His mouth opens on cue.

 

"Good, Charlie. Just a little more."

 

One eye opens and then closes.

 

While he drinks, I think about the news of the artificial pancreas. Everything is always four to five years away it seems. It’s not a cure, but it’s something.

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Much buzz has been going around the diabetes community about the recent announcement of the JDRF/Animas partnership to develop a "first generation artificial pancreas", and rightly so. The ability to eat like a "normal person", to not have to worry about debilitating highs and lows, to be able to sleep without fear of not waking up again... these are things which are, quoth Hamlet, "devoutly to be wish'd". That the road between here and there is not so simple a passage as we might hope, is well-known, and much littered with papers sporting words like "cure", "encapsulation", "transplant", "gene therapy", and -- of course -- "artificial pancreas". (READ MORE)

Yesterday, I discussed how I'd like diabetes healthcare providers and the healthcare industry to better use existing tests and technologies, and how I believe our current crop of devices and programs might be developed in the near-term future. Today I'm going to discuss items that will take a bit longer to develop and get through FDA approval, or which may take technological and medical breakthroughs to bring to fruition.

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