'Making Connections' - Day 2 Medtronic Diabetes Community Exchange

Today we started the day by filming for Medtronic's World Diabetes Day campaign, by sharing our thoughts on hypos. I decided to talk about the important role of nutrition in hypo prevention and also keeping an eye out for them during exercise. The filming and photography was fun, and a really relaxed way to start the day.

Lights, Camera, Action!

We were then joined by diabetes specialist nurse Rosie, from the UK, who belongs to a company called Successful Diabetes. Which she started a number of years ago and involves engaging health care professionals and people with diabetes, with the psychological side of the condition. Which as you'll know if you've read previously, is something I consider a very important component to managing the condition. We participated in a number of activities with Rosie, I particularly enjoyed one where we divided up into groups and posted to the 'diabetes wall' on topics concerning coping mechanisms for diabetes.

The Responses to Some of the Successful Diabetes Exercises

After lunch we then had a presentation from some of the European Medtronic team about one of their newest developments, launching in December - Guardian Connect. From what I understood about the exciting new product, it's an innovation made for people on injections. Similarly to my own Enlite CGM sensor (in aesthetics) people on injections wear the new CGM sensor and it talks to an app on the mobile phone (i-phone for the moment) or i-pod giving 'real-time' data of what's going on with glucose levels. Like all devices of this kind at the moment I believe, the lag time for results is about 15 minutes, which is down to human physiology over technology. It already has approval for children and adults too.

NEW: Guardian Connect

What I thought was particularly clever about the Guardian Connect aswell, was that the alerts that you would normally get from the Enlite sensors about hypos or hypers for example. Can be sent by text message to loved ones and carers automatically on the new device. Which I think could be incredibly reassuring for both the person with diabetes and the upto 5 people they choose to receive the alerts. There's no word on price yet for the new device, but I believe that information will be released soon/ a little closer to launch.

I had a brilliant time in Barcelona, and too soon the weekend was over. But not without making some lovely new friends and learning about some exciting future technologies and campaigns! Look out for my blog on Hypo Heroes coming soon!