Medtronic Diabetes Advocate Forum: Demo, Discussion and Disclosure.

One of the many cool experiences at the Diabetes Advocate Forum last week was seeing the new remote CGM system, MySentry, in action.  A Medtronic employe performed a demonstration for us, and there were several members of the management team available to field our questions (as well as tolerate our propensity to crack snarky jokes).

I grabbed some video of most of the demo and the discussion that followed it (ranging from FDA obstacles to insurance coverage to "Does it stream Netflix?") (spoiler: it doesn't). As someone who isn't currently (and has never been) a Medtronic customer, I appreciated learning about what this MySentry thing is all about - and hearing those LOUD ALARMS in person.

Here you go:

The event held some surprises for those of us who attended; among the biggest was that Medtronic Diabetes announced that any of us in attendance at the Forum are offered the chance to trial the MySentry system for three months at no cost to us.

I haven't determined an answer to this offer yet - but I wanted to disclose this to you all, and let you know that none of us knew about this offer when we accepted the invitation to attend.

Is it an incredibly generous opportunity I'm grateful to be offered? Yes. Does it make me feel a little weird about accepting the offer? Yes. While the MySentry sounds like a great tool for a lot of individuals (parents of CWD, folks who already use the Medtronic pump and CGM, and people thinking of making the switch to Medtronic in the near future, for example), I'm not sure I'm one of them. I will, however, be interested to hear from others who trial the system what they think of it.

The offer also makes me wish that so many more advocates for the diabetes community could have attended, and could be offered this same opportunity. (Sara makes some great points today along these lines - go read what she wrote here.)

Thank you again to Medtronic for hosting this event - more to come later this week!

Disclosure: Medtronic paid for my flights, meals and ground transportation during the Forum Thursday evening and Friday. I, and others, chose to stay an extra day and were on our own for costs incurred during that time. We were not paid to attend, nor are we obligated to write about the Forum.