Given the obvious costs and issues associated with a full-featured phone, it seems like this could be something like an old school pager (which could be smaller and much more durable).
You could have a low power system like ESP32 or STM32 act as the artificial pancreas and transmit data to a smartphone over BT
Ah, that’s what I was missing. It’s not one official product from a manufacturer, it’s a “hack” solution. Thank you.
iPhone SE4 ~= iPhone 14.
iPod Touch was good for kids, Apple should bring it back.
The phone just sends the CGM data on to the cloud so we can see his numbers any time.
I also have a NightScout setup that's downloading his CGM data and saving it for us. It's not strictly necessary for anything we're doing, but I like the saved data and it's was useful for working with his Endo when they hadn't yet bought a Dexcom clinic license.
This is an area in which technology is hugely helpful, however the development cycle is incredibly slow. Like glacial. It’s unclear how much that’s helping…
That said, I’m super happy to have the options we have at this point.
This is not something you want to go cheap on. iPhones are flat out better hardware than everything shown. I went down the Android route for Omnipod/G6. Was horrible UX and unreliable. (For a while, the OmniPod app would only work on <10 Android phone models. Ugh).
The requirement he missed is Dexcom Remote. That’s not a “cheap” phone thing.
We’re on year two of an iPhone Mini in an Otterbox case. The Android phone didn’t make it 9 months.
Ack --> I misread your article and thought your child was 14 years old, not 4. I don't believe kids that young qualify for any of the auto-adjusting toolkits. The medtronic has a minimum age of 14 (I think). In any case, the best advice I can give is to get your child on something like medtronic's pump + cgm + smartguard as soon as you can. Ideally the minimum age limits will drop and the quality of the treatment will keep improving.
I left the no-longer-relevant-to-you comment below in case it would be interesting to others.
Good luck with everything.
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This is a different suggestion than you were talking about in your article, but:
If possible, I would highly suggest trying out the medtronic minimed 780g with guardian 4 or simplera using the "smartguard" feature. This is the first out of the box solution I've ever tried that almost (but not quite) felt like magic in terms of achieving good control that was mostly automated.
This setup provides 3 things not yet available in the dexcom associated systems: 1) auto adjusts your basal rate (via a weighted average or 6ish days) 2) aggressively adjusts basal rate to avoid lows 3) aggressively micro boluses to help prevent highs.
I have recently switched from a tandem x2 with dexcom g6 and g7 and used with xdrip+ android phone app (similar or same as the nightscout you mention, depending on where you get it.)
The dexcom cgm with the tandem auto correct would typically take (for me) 6 hours to correct a high from something like too low meal bolus. The medtronic usually takes less than 2 hours and doesn't peak nearly as high.
More importantly, the hypoglycemia prevention is a complete game changer. I have not had a severe low blood sugar since switching -- and this means avoiding the hypoglycemia followed by 24-48 hours of higher insulin resistance.
The out of the box systems are getting really good, and are advancing at a quick pace now (which until recently hasn't been the case). The quality of control I have now is much better than with xdrip+ and the auto controls available in the tandem x2.
I used to eyeball my android phone many times during the day to follow trends and try and catch highs or lows early. Now, I don't need to adjust basal rates. If I miss calculate the carb counting for a meal, the auto correct takes care of it. Now I only need to pay attention to longer trends relating to meals boluses and relying more on a1c values to double check that the control is really ok.
AAPS is good, it could be better, but it has a complete set of features we need. Just need a phone
But the total automation of basal based on realtime CGM is a lifesaver.
