Welcome to the Empowered Patient Podcast with Karen Jagoda. This show is a window into the latest innovations in applying generative AI, novel therapeutics and vaccines, and the changing dynamics in the medical and healthcare environment. One focus is on how providers, pharmaceutical companies, and payers are empowering patients. In addition, conversations are often about how providers, care facilities, pharmaceutical companies, and payers are being empowered by technology to improve patient outcomes and reduce friction across the healthcare landscape.
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May 21, 2024
Lou Lintereur, Chief Engineer for automated delivery systems at Medtronic Diabetes, brought his knowledge from working as an aerospace engineer at NASA to developing technology for those living with diabetes. He introduces the MiniMed 780G, a closed-loop system that combines an insulin pump and continuous glucose monitor (CGM) with a control algorithm that tailors itself to each patient's unique physiology and Meal Detection technology, which helps manage their blood sugar levels. Patient feedback is essential to the continuing innovation of these hybrid closed-loop tools to manage diabetes.
Lou explains, "There are two main challenges we're always trying to deal with, and they kind of compete with each other. One is just the fundamental technology, trying to get the best therapy for the patients and the best outcomes for a long, healthy life where they're feeling good. With respect to diabetes, it's about keeping your blood sugar under as tight a control as possible within a normal glucose range. So that poses the technical challenges of how to design a control system to do that with all the uncertainties of human physiology and so forth."
"But on the other side, the systems we make at Medtronic Diabetes are almost consumer products. In order to get the therapy that they need, the patient often has to contribute to the therapy. They need to indicate when they're eating, for example, and then help the system calculate how much they're eating so that they can dose the insulin properly to manage their meals better. It requires some cooperation with the patients. So, on that side of the challenge is, how do you make the system easy enough to use so that the patient can get the best outcomes possible and do as little work as possible? Because the last thing the patient wants to do is be bothered all the time having to manage their therapy."
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