Al Mann: Invention of the First Wearable Insulin Pump

[mango]

Interesting paper I found. Here’s a snippet:

“The idea for an automatic insulin pump that would replace this manual process circulated among diabetes specialists for years before the first version was created by Dean Kamen in the late 1970s. Called the Auto-Syringe, the infusion pump was carried in a large backpack by the diabetic, so it was not very practical. Following Kamen's pioneering work, Alfred E. Mann, then the CEO of Pacesetter Systems, formed a team in 1980 to develop an wearable insulin pump in conjunction with NASA and the Applied Physics Laboratory at Johns Hopkins University. The team became Pacesetter Systems Infusion Division, later becoming MiniMed, and now a division Medtronic.”



ndhi.org/files/1513/8990/1148/Integrated_Insulin_Pump_Therapy.pdf

[uvula]

Cool but not entirely correct. Kamen was born in 1951 and started working on his insulin pump in 1971 (wikipedia). This picture shows a 1960's packpack sized pump on the left that was not kamen's. The middle shows Kamen's pump which is not that large.  (I don't remember where I found the picture but it was not wikipedia.)

[agedhippie]

Aug 31, 2023 20:26:53 GMT -5 uvula said:

Cool but not entirely correct. Kamen was born in 1951 and started working on his insulin pump in 1971 (wikipedia). This picture shows a 1960's packpack sized pump on the left that was not kamen's. The middle shows Kamen's pump which is not that large.  (I don't remember where I found the picture but it was not wikipedia.)


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Lol. Here we are 60 years later and we are only just getting to the dual hormone (insulin and glucagon) pump again from that original backpack sized pump.

[uvula]

For comparison, in 60 years we went from the Wright Brothers first flight to landing on the moon.

[letitride]

Priorities we just got to get out of this place or die trying even if its a barren rock. Pure Lunacy!

[sayhey24]

You could say a marketing scheme of the "pink" pump made the insulin pump mainstream and what it is today.

This sounds a lot like afrezza to me - “We wanted pumps to become the standard of care,” but that didn’t happen, Fredrickson told me in a telephone interview from her home in the Los Angeles area. She said that physicians wouldn’t prescribe a medical device they didn’t understand; educating patients was difficult; and insurers were reluctant to cover an expensive, largely unproven technology."

Maybe we need a pink inhaler? diatribe.org/golden-age-of-the-insulin-pump

[agedhippie]

That's a pretty good article. Your second paragraph nails the problem which is fairly universal - you don't want to be the one educating the market. You see this in Afrezza. It needs to be handled differently from the label and most doctors are (correctly) following the label.

It was the same with pumps, "pens are good enough and don't break down" was a common refrain despite the reality that pumps almost very broke down (I don't know anyone whose pump broke and we were running a Type 1 support group). Gradually the pump companies educated the endos and they started to prescribe them to the point where when I swapped endos around 2010 his first reaction was why wasn't I on a pump and we would fix that (short answer; because I didn't want to be!) This approach is not cheap though. The description of the sort of support pump manufacturers provide is accurate, it's very high touch. Back around 2010 in New York the trainer hand delivered the pump and spent a couple of hours making sure you understood it before they even let you run it with a saline cartridge never mind insulin.

These days they try to get a new Type 1 on a pump ASAP because the data says the outcome will be better, and for kids it's easier on the parents. There is a standard risk management practice where if you have the choice between two broadly equivalent mitigations for a risk you always chose the most familiar and understood of the two. Today that is pumps.

[sayhey24]

Lets hope with the kids study results and the moms, the SoC for kids will change from pumps to afrezza and a daily or even weekly shot. We all know few kids especially those in youth sports don't want to be running around with a pump. I can also tell you a pump malfunction killed my cousin at the age of 38.

I hope Mike has something like the "pink" pump trick lined up for afrezza with the kids results coming in soon as Al did with the pump.