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Are there any organisations that could use old insulin pumps?

Z

zand

Master
Messages
10,878
Type of diabetes
Type 2
Treatment type
Diet only
A friend has an old Tandem T Slim pump, still in perfect condition but the NHS doesn’t want it back and my friend doesn't use it anymore. I believe they cost around £2K and it seems such a waste to throw it out. I wondered if there was an organisation or someone they could donate it to ? Does anyone know of somewhere that could put it to good use?

Thanks :)
 
Hi @zand ,

Hope yer well..
Don’t quote me on this but the average lifespan of a pump to use safely is around 4/5 years?

I know there was a charity helping with donations to diabetics in the Ukraine..
Your friend could try that route?

Best wishes.
 
SimonP78 said:
The other option is to donate it e.g. the openaps project to see if it could be of use to a developer (i.e. to make more pumps compatible):

Links here, I'd would be tempted to ask on Gitter (link on the page below). Gitter is an online chat hosting service which looks much like IRC (from back in the day):
Click to expand...
Thank you, that's something I hadn't heard of before.
 
Jaylee said:
Hi @zand ,

Hope yer well..
Don’t quote me on this but the average lifespan of a pump to use safely is around 4/5 years?

I know there was a charity helping with donations to diabetics in the Ukraine..
Your friend could try that route?

Best wishes.
Click to expand...
Thank you
 
Great question. What a waste to toss it!

I've heard of people using the same pump for upwards of 6 years. They are self funded here and not everyone has a spare 7K just sitting around.

The 4-5 years is not a realistic assessment of the lifetime of a pump. Pump manufacturers run a line between short enough to get the most repeat business and long enough to obtain approval.

Hope you can find a good home, however unfortunately anyone who gets it will probably be unable to get HCP support for a second-hand pump.

Edit: I missed the 'organisations'. That would probably be able to side-step my last point.
 
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