Dr Ashley Ng

Warning: this is purely just a venting post! There will be nothing deep and meaningful or reflective about this.

Since the start of the year, I had been having trouble getting a hold of consumables for my pump due to stock delays. These days, I find myself less and less organised (as you do with two toddlers, a career and chronic condition), which has left me dangerously close to running out of supplies. I also found myself having less patience dealing with everything related to the inconvenience of pump tubing. This led me to start considering the Omnipod as an option as I am overdue for a new pump with my private health insurance.

When I trialed the Omnipod initially, I hated everything about their “Personal Diabetes Manager” aka PDM. It was another thing to carry around, the touchscreen was slow to respond and the user interface was not very intuitive. But…the tubless feature was a definite stand out. I started leaning towards the idea of building my own app so I could take the PDM out of the equation and enjoy the luxury of a patch pump. I would even put up with the incessant ticking and beeping noises from the Pod if I could just get rid of the PDM.

Fast forward to now where I’ve been using the Omnipod Dash for almost a month now. My key learnings so far: i) I still hate the PDM with a passion, ii) the PDM is not my phone and can’t be used for contactless payment, iii) technology hates me. Each time I sit down to build my app just to avoid using the PDM, I run into some sort of error that requires technical support. So I make do with the blasted PDM.

I’ve also realised/forgotten that insulin pumps have so many subtle differences between them that you need that initial adjustment period to get your rates all right. For me, I have had to really remember to pre-bolus for meals as I was getting rocket highs after each meal. Seeing numbers in the high teens more often than not has left me very defeated and exhausted. After a quick email exchange with my educator, we tweaked a few things and now I’ve been cruising on lows and rebound highs all day. #NoWins My educator also asked for me to upload my data onto Glooko so she could see it. And what happens? The uploader won’t work. I. Just. Can’t.

I think the main lesson from all of this is really…why aren’t these massive companies user-testing these devices before going to market with them? There are so many things that could have been resolved with with user-feedback. And if they are user-testing these technologies – they either haven’t done it with a broad enough group, or they’re just not listening.

Diabetes technology is supposed to make our lives better; not be an additional source of distress and burden! I just hope now with all my heart that the Omnipod 5 helps to alleviate some of these problems if I don’t get around to building my own app. /rant