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New Flash Glucose Monitoring from Abbott - Bloodless Testing

This looks very good and a step up in the game.

However still at £3/day you are looking at over £1k/year this is still too steep for me to justify as I pay nothing for the current setup of finger pricks.

I expect the NHS would not want to fork out for this but I would be interested in the cost of comparison. Just looking at online UK retailers for lancets, blood glucose & maybe an option of ketone testing I would give a modest cost at £50/month assuming testing 3-4x per day.

I would happily contribute £1/day to have this system and if it is true what they claim - that more testing = better controlled diabetes - then this system would decrease overall nhs costs in the long run.

I doubt though that they will fund or even subsidise, which is a shame.
 
I tried to work out the cost to the NHS of my current supply of strips per month and I think it's about £75 for 5 boxes. So presumably there would be a price cheaper than £45 per sensor for the NHS so not a huge difference if I would use 2 a month.
I think they will be available on prescription. Maybe not straight away though!
 
I think they will be on prescription soon. Perhaps we ought to start a petition now? Is anyone geared with enough knowledge to set one up and then together lets all actively get behind it?
 
It tests ketones too!

But for self funding, £1,000 per annum isn't doable, for me.
 
Omnipod said:
I think they will be on prescription soon. Perhaps we ought to start a petition now? Is anyone geared with enough knowledge to set one up and then together lets all actively get behind it?
Click to expand...
I wouldn't be starting/signing until I seen how others got on with it first and whether it was worth petitioning for. Looks very promising, but proof of the pudding is in the eating.
 
Omnipod said:
I think they will be on prescription soon. Perhaps we ought to start a petition now? Is anyone geared with enough knowledge to set one up and then together lets all actively get behind it?
Click to expand...

Better to wait and see if the monitor is going to be available on the NHS, I'm sure you need 100,000 signatures for a petition to be debated in the House of Commons.
 
I am sure 100 000 signatures would be achievable. The product has gone through vigorous testing and trials and would never be released if it was not accurate in its trials. Having the NHS supplying this product would also mean that Abbot would have the funds to keep bettering the technology based upon the huge numbers using the product.

If say 2000 people off this site signed the petition and then posted the petition on Twitter and Facebook, I am sure the amount of signatures would be achieved in no time.
 
I'd be very keen to sign a petition but I'm very interested to find out first how it works every day. The tech it uses to take measurements is the same as all cgm use. How did Abbott make it get accurate results without calibration and all other cgm companies didn't?
 
its been years in planning and design and with new technology as used in the latest iphones. Its not a CGM and the technology is probably similar but more simpler.
Its just new ongoing technology. Omnipod have now teamed up with Dexcom and they are combining their technology to get the dexcom working with the Omnipod. There is a drive to pump more funding into diabetes research and technologies.
 
The tech from the phones is NFC, it's just how the data is send from the sensor (the disc stuck to your arm) to the reader. What i'm asking about is the sensor on the disc itself, the thing that does the measurements itself. It takes the reading from interstitial fluid, just like all other CGMs, it's not a new tech. What's new is the fact that the measurements are accurate enough to replace a bg meter and they don't need calibrations. That's what's missing in current CGMs and I'm curious how they did it.

During your trial, how close were the readings to the bg meter? Do you have to do some kind of initial bg test after putting in a new disc?
 
Readings were very close. Varied by 1 or 2 mmol. Its the same as blood glucose meters. There is a variable between 1 to 3 mmols. If you take a blood sample and test it using 2 different meters, there will be a variable difference. If you test different fingers using the same meter at the same time, you will get variable readings.
Have you ever felt hypo and tested and your BG was say 4? Have you ever tested out of the blue, feeling completely normal and got a hypo reading? Its all relative and within the accepted variables.
I guess glucose gets into the entire body even the interstital fluid. The blood glucose levels - rising or dropping in intstitial fluid is probably slower than blood but with formulas and programming, I guess they have carried out years of study to match it to blood readings.

i guess what I am saying is they have done so much research into matching interstitial fluid to blood to get an almost acurate conversion / reading.

Abbott have had loads of type 1 diabetics trial the product and loads of normal healthy non diabetics trail the product and so far its been spot on.

Apparantly theres a whole team of type 1's, type 2's and non diabetics trialing the product as we speak at Kings College.
 
Thanks for the info, Onipod.

How was the sensor? Easy to fit? Any problems with it staying in place? Would it hold up to me playing golf for instance?
 
jackois said:
Thanks for the info, Onipod.

How was the sensor? Easy to fit? Any problems with it staying in place? Would it hold up to me playing golf for instance?
Click to expand...

The sensor sticks well. No problem playing sport. I even wore mine in the steam room and a jacuzzi. (guess i shouldnt say that as they did not recomend it but as usual, i pushed the boundry)
Easy to fit. Have you watched the videos? If not go to the link on my start of this post and click on the different videos. Its quick, painless and sticks well.

My only issue was.... IF for some reason the disc did come off before 14 days..... that could be expensive.
 

I believe with most cgms if it fails before the stated time frame then you receive a replacement sensor (assuming you've used it as per guidelines)

Speculation, but I would hope that should it come unstuck and/or fail then a replacement might be offered (again, assuming you've followed the guidelines)
 


Not so sure, there was a petition up and running on the forum a couple of years ago to get test strips prescribed for type 2's, it didn't reach anywhere near the 100,000 mark, despite people mentioning on the likes of Facebook.
 
The technology in Freestyle Libre is called Flash Technology - it's new and inot CGM . the Sensor and Reader are not tethered.
The accuracy is good - seen it verses meter results
You will get different results from a blood sample from the same finger on different strips meters etc, as blood is a dynamic solution and variances in the enzymes on the strips, however there are allowable tolerance limits - think about bloods oxygen content to and from lungs

Fitting sensor is painless, takes an hour to adjust /stabilise with someone, Reader won't let you take readings until then - the software reports give you very easy to read, complete 24hour picture of Glucose trends
 
Perhaps we ought to start a petition now? Is anyone geared with enough knowledge to set one up and then together lets all actively get behind it?
Click to expand...
You are welcome to do that, but I won't be signing it as I think it would be a terrible idea to introduce legislation to bypass the existing model - if the new device is cheaper and better than existing test strips, then you don't need new legislation and if it isn't it basically comes down to taking cancer drugs away from a child so you don't have to prick your finger - unless you'd like to pay more taxes); essentially, you'd replace a somewhat rational model of deciding what drugs the NHS's finite budget should be spent on with a popularity content (are you suffering from an obscure disease? well, too bad because you won't get the 100k signatures needed to get the NHS to pay for it)
 
Is anyone else watching this presentation live?

I would post the url, but it contains personal details.......
 
Well said Alex.... I'm sure that if it works out better financially the NHS will have it on the books quickly enough.

My last HB1AC was 35mmol/mol, in the non diabetic range, which came at the cost of at least 6 blood tests a day for food & then a couple more for driving and suspected low BS purposes. This equates to a tub of test strips a week. I'm lucky that my GP & Diabetic care team understand the need for good control and have no qualms at filling my repeat prescription requests. I'm sure that they are also switched on enough to realise that something like the Libre may save money in the long run and will prescribe this when it's available.

The NHS will know all about the Freestyle Libre already and I'm sure will be doing the costings to work out if it's cost effective...
 
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