What's your experiences on the Omnipod 5 pump?

[Jason23]

I have been on Omnipod 5 for almost a month now. My A1C beforehand was pretty stable at about 47-53mmol/mol when I would have my A1C tests done, however I had a lot of highs and lows so my doctor wanted me to try the Omnipod 5.

I have mixed opinions about it. I honestly don't think it's that great, however I've been on it for a short time. The main issues I have are that the infusion sites are painful, especially on the 3rd day and my most recent pod on my arm left a rash and the site became lumpy which it wasn't beforehand.

Another issue I have is that it's not great at correcting high blood sugar levels. Whilst I do need to get better at pre bolusing, it's sometimes the case where I eat something which makes the sugar levels spike and it only comes down very slowly by doing a correction. I find that using an insulin pen is better at correcting high blood sugar levels.

Also occasionally I have found the pumps stop working early, one fell off my bottom within 2 hours and another stopped working midway through day 2.

I'm using a Dexcom G6 (soon to be upgraded to G7) which recently has had issues with the sensors not giving readings the whole way through the 10 days.

I hope that this works out in the long term but sometimes I feel that it was easier to be on MDI. My time in range was about 60% before starting Omnipod and whilst there has been some days where I have been in range almost the whole day, there have been days where my sugar levels are incredibly unstable because the pump can't correct a high blood sugar level.

 

[evilclive]

Well, I was just thinking about this after about 9 months of using mine.


First, I'll start with saying it's been better for me than MDI. And I've not had the problems you've mentioned. But I will note that they take a while to learn how to correct for you - eg the first pod doesn't make any effort at all to do anything but the initially programmed basal. This will come up later...
And the support is excellent - when a controller died they offered to get me one later that day, and not necessarily at home. (I didn't need one then, next morning was fine).


Here's what I think could be done better :


Glucose level on lock screen. I don't want to have to type my code in to get my glucose level, especially when wearing gloves.
Activity mode doesn't cope with hard exercise. I'm learning that pausing insulin stands a chance. It would be great to be able to pause while in automated mode to allow the high from some food to be taken care of by the exercise without shoving more insulin in and causing a hypo quite soon afterwards.
No backup of controller data. If your device/controller dies for whatever reason, you're back to day 1 with the aforementioned learning to do again, during which time the control isn't nearly as good. Why isn't this backed up so you can carry on with the same control?
Controller is as sleek and svelte as would be expected from a very cheap mobile phone. Which is what it is. I've got used to the Freestyle Libre reader, which is small enough to keep in a pocket and does its job with just a single button press.
Carrying two fairly big devices around if you've got your mobile phone too is tedious.
Alarms are just wrong. Eg the "pump about to end" one is really intrusive. Yes, you've told me. Quite a few times now. I'll be changing it when it finally times out. But the out of range ones can be too subtle.
Two for libre users :
No ability to display glucose level on another device automatically - eg a watch. I know libre doesn't support this, but it doesn't stop the omnipod controller doing it.
When the pump is out of scanning range of the sensor (happens at sensor switchover time), it would be good if a simple scan with the controller could be used to record a level and allow the automatic control to continue.

 

[BadaBing]

Two for libre users :
No ability to display glucose level on another device automatically - eg a watch. I know libre doesn't support this, but it doesn't stop the omnipod controller doing it.

FYI, in the last two/three weeks Insulet/Abbott have just (belatedly after patients have been asking for the better part of 18 months) conducted a very limited UK users trial of real time "follow me" functionality of the Omnipod 5/Freestyle Libre 2 Plus hybrid closed loop. At present, this allows glucose data from the Omnipod 5 to be sent in real time every five minutes (not every minutes when wearing the Libre 2 Plus as a standalone cgm) to Abbott's LibreLink app, where it is then picked up in Abbott's LibreLinkUp app and can be sent to parents and caregivers of diabetics.

The limited trial of the "follow me" functionality for Omnipod 5/Libre 2 Plus HCL has ended I think and those who took part have been asked by Insulet/Abbott to give their feedback.

No official rollout date has been announced.

One consequence of this new "follow me" functionality is that, once it is finally rolled out to everyone, it should be possible to see glucose data every five minutes on a compatible smartwatch using LibreLinkUp and a third party app.

Of course, Omnipod 5/Dexcom G6 (and now Dexcom G7) hybrid closed loop had real time follow and "direct-to-watch" functionality from the very beginning.

 

[richyb]

I find it good but I have to have settings no where near correct to what my body should be. I.e. my insulin/ carb ratios. Insulin sensitivity amount. Insulin duration. These settings are no where near what I should really be on. It means my bolus/ basal daily amounts are not the same. I have a lot more bolus than basal. But I achieve high 90-100% in range and good levels.

 

[Simon4068]

Hi. I have been trialling it on and off and am thinking of giving up on it altogether.

Issues that I have found:

- The canulas can kink, stopping the flow of insulin into the body. I have had a few instances of this.
- The pods can easily fall off. I had a bad experience recently when I was at a Suede gig, right at the front. I started feeling progressively ill during the gig and had to fight my way through the crowd to get to the exit. People were looking at me like I had o/d'd on recreational drugs. I was quite scary. I tested my blood and it said "High", which is actually VERY high.
- The pods cause skin irritation and remove can remove the skin when taken off.
- My insulin requirement is pretty high so the pod would run out in less than two days.

The marketing strapline says "Simplify life". For me personally, life is much simpler using insulin pens. I felt like I was being used as a guinea pig rather than this being the life-changing enhancements that my diabetes consultant advocated. Also, I have a real problem with the artificial intelligence aspects of this device. I am totally against AI and will not use the services of any company that ostensibly utilises AI. I made an exception in this case but it goes against the grain.

 

[evilclive]

There's AI and there's "AI". In this case, the AI involved with the pump and managing the doses will be very much "AI", a marketing label for "we've got some code to work out doses and we're giving it the trendy name", not the massive datacentre/GPU complex which is problematic in various ways.

That said, if you're not going to use the services of any company that ostensibly uses AI, you are going to have to probably go quite close to Amish - it's everywhere, everybody is using it, it's going to be very hard to avoid.

Regarding the pump - if it's not working for you, then yes, stop using it. If pens work better for you, then that's what you should be using. For quite a lot of people, the pump does make life better, but it's not going to be for everybody.

(and slight jealousy on seeing Suede, but that's probably my own fault )