Dexcom Update: Bonus Episode with CEO Kevin Sayer

Dexcom's CEO Kevin Sayer checks in with Stacey to answer your questions. He talks about their new pharmacy benefit for Veterans and why Dexcom would love to move everyone off of durable medical. Plus, a follow up on their hospital program we first discussed this spring, adhesive issues with the G6 and looking ahead to the G7.

Stacey also takes some time to talk about the interview process & which companies we feature on this show.

There is a video of this interview - you can watch it here.

 

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Episode Transcription

Stacey Simms  0:00

Diabetes Connections is brought to you by One Drop created for people with diabetes by people who have diabetes by Gvoke HypoPen, the first premixed autoinjector for very low blood sugar, and by Dexcom take control of your diabetes and live life to the fullest with Dexcom.

 

Announcer  0:21

This is Diabetes Connections with Stacey Simms.

 

Stacey Simms  0:27

Welcome to a bonus episode of Diabetes Connections. I'm so glad to have you along for this. When we talk to the technology companies, especially Dexcom, we get a whole bunch of new listeners. So if this is your first episode, welcome, we aim to educate and inspire about type 1 diabetes by sharing stories of connection. Week after week, I talked to lots of people in the community sharing stories from athletes and celebrities and tech companies and regular people just living with diabetes. My son lives with type one. He was diagnosed almost 14 years ago when he was a toddler. And we've been doing the show for more than five years now usually release episodes on a weekly basis, we throw in some bonus episodes when the time is right. And this is one of those times

Dexcom had some interesting information to share. So I jumped on zoom with the CEO with Kevin Sayer. We talked about the new pharmacy benefit for the Veterans Administration. A follow up on their hospital program we first discussed this past spring, I answered your questions about adhesive changes for the G6. And looking ahead to the G7. I'm going to come back at the end and do some inside baseball stuff about the interview process. And about which companies I feature on the show why we feature them when we talk to them? What kind of questions I asked that sort of thing. I got some good questions about that in the Facebook group that I would really like to address. So I will do that at the end.

As you heard just a moment ago. Dexcom is a sponsor of the show. As longtime listeners know I say this every time we talk to a sponsor, but it's really important to get this out there. I do not allow sponsors to dictate the content. So they will not tell me what to say during an interview. They will not ask me to edit that's not part of the deal. They are a sponsor. We believe in them, they get a commercial, we like the product. It doesn't mean we don't ask questions. And we probably speak to Dexcom the most frequently. But I like to point this out every time we talk to sorry if you get tired of hearing it. But those disclosures are important.

You should also know there is a video version of this interview was a zoom interview, we taped it, it's on our YouTube channel Diabetes Connections, and I shared it on social as well. Toward the end, my son Benny stops by and we make reference to some appearance issues. All you really need to know if you don't want to watch it you just want to listen here is that his hair is now dyed. It's this crazy bleached blonde, and he's wearing a giant purple Snuggie. He makes quite the impression.

All right, let us get to what is important here. And here is my interview with Dexcom Kevin Sayer:

Different kind of way to tape an episode of Diabetes Connections, but we're going to give it a try. And joining me is the CEO of Dexcom, Kevin Sayer. Kevin, thanks for doing this. I appreciate it.

 

Kevin Sayer  3:01

Oh, you're welcome, Stacey, good to talk to you again.

 

Stacey Simms  3:04

So normally this time of year, you'd be in Europe for a EASD. That conferences is happening. But virtually,

 

Kevin Sayer  3:11

it was happening virtually. It's not quite the same. But I get notes from everybody who's listening to the presentations, gathering papers to find out what went on during the day. So are what we're trying, everybody's trying to do different things.

 

Stacey Simms  3:25

Well, I have a laundry list as usual to go through what is Dexcom presenting anything at this conference, because there are a few

 

Kevin Sayer  3:31

papers, supporting the strength of CGM and treating diabetes. Some of the results in the type two studies that have happened recently and some of the results and some of the studies with the senior community and things like that. Nothing earth shattering, but again, all supporting CGM and how well it works and helping people take care of their diabetes. So you know, a good show for us. Just typical.

 

Stacey Simms  3:56

Well, we've got a lot to cover just today as our speaking and news release came out about a new agreement with University of Virginia. And this is for as you're watching or listening University of Virginia as a bit of a history with Dexcom in terms of the place where type zero was developed. So what is this agreement all about?

 

Kevin Sayer  4:17

Well, and you're correct, yeah, we've had a relationship with the various teams in Charlottesville for quite some time, the type zero group that we actually acquired in 2018, or the algorithm for the control IQ system, and then control steady resided, we felt that was a tremendous asset going forward, not only in developing automated insulin delivery technology, but possibly for developing decision support tools. For those who don't want an automated insulin delivery system over time. In conjunction with that acquisition. You've got also always really smart people to still stay at University of Virginia and do Diabetes Research and they're very access to clinical trials, clinical networks, all the other things they've done.

We've had an informal relationship with them for a long time and we discuss could you guys help us with this or that and as our companies became more mature, and they got more involved in diabetes research that we felt was important to fund the things we were asking for, and give them an opportunity to do some good work on our behalf. So over the next five years, we'll target some leading edge new diabetes research project and use those brilliant minds to work on behalf of Dexcom, and ultimately, on behalf of our patients,

Stacey Simms:

is there anything specific that you can tell us?

Kevin Sayer:

first, you know, we have current generation, automated and some delivery algorithms out there will certainly work on next generations, and ones that will just fine tune what we've already learned and, and do better. On top of that, I think you'll see us work for decision support, like I spoke about earlier, what tools can we offer somebody that is treating their diabetes and using insulin that are meaningful, and not getting in a way all the time? So what constructive? Can we do there and predict now that we have all this data from all of our patients, because the data has been uploaded from the phone, we think that analytics capabilities of the team at UVA can certainly go through this and find a lot of things that could be helpful for us to offer to our patients. And you know, as we look at even over time, they develop simulators and all sorts of things and looking at diabetes data that we think it'd be applicable for the future with respect to working in the hospital, or gestational diabetes, even the type two non insulin take taking patients. So now that we signed this agreement, it's up to us and VBA team at the type zero team to figure out and say, Okay, here's the things we want to work on. And we're we're just excited to have the agreement in place.

 

Stacey Simms  6:39

For people who are hearing things like we have all the data from the phones for the first time you and I've talked about this before. But can you talk a little bit about Dexcoms use of data. In other words, you know, My son has used Dexcom for seven years now. So you guys know everything about him. But you don't really know about him? Well, blinded, right?

 

Kevin Sayer  6:57

We know that they're from transmitter 1765 G, here's the glucose signals that we received. And you can look at what is going on with your son. And we actually have data regarding how it performs as well to come to the app so we can service it. And we can use that information to make our product better. But we don't share anything with anybody without a patient opting in and saying, I would like to share my data with x, or I would like to share my data with the Southern Company. There's no data sharing, there's it's absolutely kept very confidential. we comply with all HIPAA requirements and keep things very buttoned up.

 

Stacey Simms  7:34

All right, again, like I said, there's a laundry list here. So the next thing I wanted to ask you about, and this is wonderful news for veterans that Dexcom G6 available at VA pharmacies, at no cost, it will, it's covered by the VA

 

Kevin Sayer  7:47

covered by the VA. You know, in the past, as many of your listeners and followers know, we've been trying to move away from durable medical equipment. As far as the coverage vehicle for our product, one of the things has been one of our biggest roadblocks is getting access to this product where people can get it easily and affordably. And within their normal course of their work. Rather than filling out a bunch of paperwork and having a bunch of Doctor notes and medical records and blood glucose logs and everything. And this coverage by the VA is going to make it accessible to veterans as long as they are on intensive insulin therapy type one and type two diabetes as a Pharmacy Benefits. So they would pick it up where they would typically pick up their drugs and and no copay. So this is a wonderful improvement for a group that really is troubled with diabetes, I think there's something like four times more incidence of diabetes in this group than the general population. So we really believe we can have a good impact here for this group of patients.

 

Stacey Simms  8:46

You know, again, I hate to ask stuff about our personal experience, because it isn't applicable to everybody. But I will say when our insurance switch to pharmacy Dexcom It is so much easier for whatever reason than going through Durable Medical, I don't know if it's the billing or just they're more efficient. I am now on a new insurance and in fact a durable medical so I'm not Yeah, thanks a lot. I got spoiled for a long time. But is is that the idea then to try to switch as many people as possible and as many insurers as possible to pharmacy and then my guess my question would be well, why? What's in it for you guys?

 

Kevin Sayer  9:20

Why is it good? for us is it's easier if we are going to have this therapy be used by all as one users and then later even type two knives when using patients. One of the keys is making it accessible and to meet patients where they are. It is not during the normal course of operations for anybody to go through the durable medical equipment process not only the patients but their caregivers. You know, endocrinologists are used to working with all the paperwork associated with durable medical equipment. While it's a hassle they understand it. Many people with diabetes using insulin don't see endocrinologist and in fact A good friend of my wife's she knew from childhood came and stopped by business not long ago. He's a year younger than me. He has type two diabetes, he went to his doctor and he said, I I'd like index calm, I can do really well with that. And his doctors and internist general practitioner, he goes, Yeah, I've heard the paperwork on that softball, I'm not going to do it. And that was the answer that he got. And that's not a good answer ever.

So the easier we can make it on everybody in the network, then the easier it is for patients to be compliant and easier to get patients on a system. And so we pushed very hard we have over 65% of lives in the US, covered lives and commercial insurance can go to the pharmacy now, but not all of them do. Most insurers insist that we have dual past durable medical equipment and the pharmacy but the most of our new patients and the majority of the new patients going on to Dexcom now are going through that channel. So we made a lot of progress. Would the advice be as people are watching or listening to if you are currently Durable Medical, call your insurer and see if it has changed. Or you can even call Dexcom or even call your insurance? See, we went again, when we get a new patient into our system, we try and determine if it's pharmacy. First, we try to determine where they can go and give them the path of least resistance to get their sensors, transmitters and everything else. So we do run a benefits check oftentimes for new patients, but not for the existing ones. They're buying product.

 

Stacey Simms  11:30

Well, I just went through that whole process. I won't bore you with the details. We have limited time.

 

Kevin Sayer  11:35

I'm sorry.

 

Stacey Simms  11:36

Thank you very much. I appreciate it. Your condolences are welcome. But it leads me we were talking about the VA and G6. This is a question you know, I'm going to jump to my listeners. We have lots of questions. And one that came up everyone of course is especially our listeners are so well educated, they're so up technically on everything. They're already waiting for the G7. I'm not even sure they want me to ask you about the G6 anymore. But the question that came up, and I think it applies to the VA as well as will Medicare cover the G7? Or should we anticipate issues with production? And all that that happened last time?

 

Kevin Sayer  12:07

know that? You know what? That's a very fair question. So I don't feel at all beat up by that we, we got an approval on G6 months sooner than we'd planned. We knew how much better it was in G5, we were planning on launching a system in the fall and instead lost it in the spring when we weren't ready. And we literally spent a year and a half trying to catch up. We have enough capacity now to build enough G6es to handle what we need very comfortably. And the factory looks so different than it was before. I mean, everything is literally automated robotic arms put every single thing together. And off we go. We are building that same infrastructure with G7 long before its approval. And the equipment we bought for G6 is not going to be applicable to G7. So we're starting over. But we are getting automated lines up and running for G7. Now we have equipment scheduled to come in over the course of the year. And in all fairness, we're not going to do that, again, we're not going to watch it for a group of people because we only have this much capacity, we're gonna when we go, we've got to be ready to roll the thing out, we will continue to produce the six because there will be use cases and geographies, then we won't flip to G7 immediately based upon our planning and our capacity, but we are going to we want to be ready to slip everything immediately. That's our goal. Right?

 

Stacey Simms  13:24

So the you're not anticipating a production issue. But in terms of and again, I know it's complicated when you're working with CMS. And when you're working with the VA, there's no reason to expect that there would be issues with those groups. Nope. Separate

 

Kevin Sayer  13:37

notion. We have been structuring our contracts in a matter whereby the G 6, 7 conversion, the simple what was difficult in the past are the durable components, the transmitter and the receiver, which he said and there's no transmitter everything's in the sensor, so we don't have to deal with that much anymore. And, and yet receivers, we will continue to sell them but it's getting much simpler, the same rules will be applicable. So we do not believe there'll be a big problem going from one sensor to the other reimbursement wise.

 

Stacey Simms  14:10

All right, so let's get to these questions. And some of these guys are very technical. So now I'm putting my glasses. Okay. I know you can't I don't know if I want to get it right. Okay, so Chris wants to know, what about plans for integrating data with reporting systems their partners use, for example, I have CGM going to my pump and the Dexcom app. Tandem has released t Connect. And the only reason that he's using the Dexcom app right now is the clarity, goal tracker. Any any ideas about further integration with the T Connect especially because people are going to start using that from their phones maybe next year.

 

Kevin Sayer  14:46

Yeah, we work with all of our partners, we were what we would like nothing more than to have all the data log into our clarity system to give patients that option. The the issue we have with it is we're all still Companies, you know, some companies believe this data is theirs, and they, they need it proprietarily it's been slow for us, quite honestly, to get data from all the other pump companies into our clarity system. We do have agreements in place where we're working on that we have that with Insulet. We're talking with Tandem about that. Now we're talking with other companies about it, we reciprocally are more than willing to give our data to be displayed into their app and their education systems. So we do share data with those who want it we have API's to whereby they can pull the data and display it if the patient gives them permission. And our criteria for accepting companies to take the data is not extremely difficult. If we view the something our patients want and need. We absolutely let them pull it through the API's. I think over time, you'll see us continue to share data and hopefully others will give us theirs. It isn't simple. Everybody has their own opinions.

 

Stacey Simms  15:53

Well, and that's another question that I've received in the past was kind of the API. I may not even be using this correct verbiage here, well, they remain open. Because there are lots of people who've developed secondary apps, some are fun, some are very useful to people. And I know that there has been a lot about open source in the community

 

Kevin Sayer  16:12

know our API interfaces are still there's a process one goes through to get that information. But by and large I there's a lot, I don't have a number 60. But I know it's certainly more than 50 could be over 100 companies who pull data from our API's into their system. And we have kept that relatively open and shared. Do I think you'll remain open? Yes? Will there be times when we say no? Sure. You always say no to something. So for example, if somebody says I want to dam the API, so I can compare you to all your competitors and say Dexcom isn't any good look at the other guys. giving you access to our API's, we don't we don't need that. We do view the data as the patients but we also view the infrastructure we build and the money we spent as investment we make for our shareholders. So it is a fine line to walk and we'll continue to look at it. Ultimately, we hope to have a live API and or whereby if you're running the Dexcom, Apple want the live data on your app, we can offer that option as well as certain partners. And you know, that's on fire with the FDA, we'd like to get approved relatively soon. So once that that's out there, we'll pick some companies and do it. But we also want it to be up to Dexcom standards. So don't we don't want to offer data to companies that are going to make horrible looking apps and great experience. We could tarnish our brand. So it's a balancing act.

 

Stacey Simms  17:33

All right. I may regret this. And we may I may run out of time, we'll have to see. Do you have a question? No, you want to say hi, my son has come in. And I'm on headphones now. So if you want to say hi, for real, he's just beautifully dressed for the occasion. And you say hello, real quick. This is the CEO of Dexcom you're making a wonderful impression

 

Kevin Sayer  17:51

Hey, hey, how are you?

Benny:

I'm good. How are you? I'm fine.

Kevin Sayer:

You got to ask me at least one question.

 

Stacey Simms  18:00

You’ve had the Dexcom since you were nine years old, really? No questions.

 

Kevin Sayer  18:03

What's your favorite Dexcom story that you could share with me

Benny:

Oh, my friend. And I were like messing around one time and we horseplay and he ripped the Dexcom off on accident but like just the the transmitter and like the the patch stayed on. So like the middle of it ripped off. But the the patch around it stayed on. And he freaked out and I like pretended to like die.

 

Kevin Sayer  18:31

That's awesome. Oh, wonderful. Thank you for contributing. Hey, it's nice to see you. Nice to see you. Mom's actually pretty cool. My mom would never let me grow my hair like that. So I'm gonna give your mom

 

Kevin Sayer  18:45

your mom, your cool.

Benny:

The CEO of Dexcom said you're cool mine. You have to use that.

 

Stacey Simms  18:50

Yeah. Yeah. I think quarantines gotten all of us. But I love you, sweetheart. I didn't mean it. That's what happens when you have a kid who takes care of everything he's supposed to take care of you let him wear a purple dinosaur snuggie, let his hair get crazy. You pick your battles. I appreciate that was very nice of you. (To Benny) Oh, see? We'll see if I don't cut any of it out. All right. Let me get back to the questions here.

All righty. Question about compression lows. Somebody asked me if they're if you are addressing this, I assume this will be as much of an issue with g7. But you know, you'll lean on it

 

Kevin Sayer: We don’t think that it will. That will be determined when we have more real world use than what we've had in clinical studies. Right now. We've got a number of of thoughts and technologies we're considering for compression. I can't give away all of it. But it is something we're working on addressing over time. Again, we have some ideas, I don't know that you can ever eliminate it because you're going to lean on it. And that's going to happen. We've looked at alternative platforms. We've looked at other technologies we've looked at longer insertion depth, shorter insertion depth, what is what are all these things do and some of the things that you think might fix it actually make it worse. So we'll look at it which Seven, you know, we are going to have an arm indication in addition to the abdomen with G7 running on both and for young children, the back of the box as well. So maybe there might be less patients on the arm for other patients, there might be more, but we we are looking at it, we do have some technology ideas that I won't give away, that might be able to fix it. So give us a little while and we'll see.

 

Stacey Simms  20:21

I’m just curious when you do these things, please tell me that you've got guys in the lab like taking naps laying on it. You know, it's not just a robotic simulation?

 

Kevin Sayer  20:30

Absolutely do we actually make go away on it for half an hour? Let's see what happens. We we do that, particularly at our feasibility studies, go away on us and see what we learn.

 

Stacey Simms  20:41

Tim wants to know, any plans for every minute data instead of just every five?

 

Kevin Sayer  20:47

I guess my question with that, and we've looked at this for years, what problem are you solving?

 

Kevin Sayer  20:53

is passing it along?

 

Kevin Sayer  20:54

When my no I'm so I'm gonna ask you the question I asked my team. So I'm letting your friend Tim be are the guys that work with me here? What problem you're solving by reading every minute? Well, you are solving a major problem, we would do that. And we've looked at that. Certainly you can possibly fine tune the algorithm better by recording video every minute or by transmitting every minute. Are you fixing anything for the patient? If we determined that that was a better experience for patient, we would absolutely address it. But right now, our patients are comfortable with five minutes. We haven't gone below that if you have an alert, you get it on a timely basis. Our alerts are very accurate in that timeframe. And so we're comfortable where we are we continue to research things like that. But our market research indicates that five minutes is absolutely fine for our patients right now.

 

Stacey Simms  21:44

I will devil's advocate by saying the response was from this is not Tim's case, but another person to chime in and say for very young children. They thought it would be helpful as someone whose child went ages two to nine with no CGM, I had don't have that perspective.

 

Kevin Sayer  21:58

Well, they're highly variable. And that could be a marker where it would be would be very helpful. Although that I learned every time we talk, Stacey

 

Stacey Simms  22:06

Well, you're more than welcome to use the Facebook group as a focus group anytime you'd like. We have some people you met one of them who thinks you know, looking at the Dexcom only when an alert is okay. And you have other people who have gone around the system because they don't like the two hour warm up. So some people can't get enough data. And some people who are 15 don't need any data. Yeah, there's a happy medium in there somewhere. I'm sure. I know we're gonna be running out of time. But I do have to ask the adhesive. It just seems that this year, there were changes. We've talked about it before. And while for some people it is getting better for some people, it is not. I know you're working on it.

 

Kevin Sayer  22:40

So let me walk you through that. We did change our adhesive. So let me be clear where and we talked about this before, we had what we felt was too many sensors fall off before the 10 days were up. And you know, if I bought a sensor, and it fell off today, and I want to I want to replace, and we replace a lot of sensors, we looked and studied a number of adhesives and arrived in one way arrived at based on numerous studies, we've not seen the irritation in our our trials that we've seen in the field. And in all fairness, the number of sensors falling off is decreased dramatically. And it is there many more sensors not falling off, and there are complaints about etc. So the trade off business wise, has been good, it has not been good for those patients who have that issue. We do have on the website, clinically proven alternatives and things that you can do to try and minimize that. There's anti allergy things you can put on your skin. There's a tape you can put on first and our tape over the top. We have studied the adhesive and the chemical composition of the adhesive a great length, we are doing some trials, just some in house studies to try some new patches to see if that helps. We've identified literally two agents that may be causing this. If we take those out, do we still have the same sticking power that we do now? So we'll look at it and if we can find a way to revise it, we will

 

Stacey Simms  24:06

when we talk to a couple of months ago, you were announcing CGM in hospitals. A lot of this was centered around COVID. Hoping to make it safer in hospitals. There's some newer information on that.

 

Kevin Sayer  24:18

How's it going? It has gone extremely well. You know, we've had over 200 hospitals reach out wanting CGM and we're in the process of getting it to tell them that eventually want to buy it. We're in over 100 now, we've now set up a registry so we can gather data from these patients. This was such for lack of a better words of fire drill, we started because there were so many people in hospitals, so many people so sick that we had to get it out there. And we literally learned new things every day. For example, the receiver really doesn't work because it's still there with the patient. They they needed phones. You don't want any individual nurses or caregivers phone, we had to give phones to the hospitals and we had to get through the IT systems and hospitals. Now that we have a pretty good idea how this works, we're creating a registry whereby we can gather data on these patients, you have to consent for us to gather your data, although you want to gather data about their healthcare experience in a hospital that came in with COVID, what drugs are they on? How are they treated, if they leave the hospital sooner or later, we want to gather that data. So we can use that to give us a basis later, at some point in time to go to the FDA and say, this will be a great hospital product.

 

Stacey Simms  25:26

This has nothing to do with hospitals, but it just occurred to me, there are a lot of diabetes camps over the last few years that have talked about maybe we could get every kid's Dexcom and put them on a screen in the infirmary or, you know, a generalized or, you know, a place where we could look at something like that. I'm curious. I don't know if that sounds like something that would even be possible.

 

Kevin Sayer  25:46

That's exactly what the hospital systems would want. They would want although CGM is going to one place, you know, we have to use the tools that we've got. So they would put sensors on patients, we'd hang phones next to them. And if they wanted to share follow on the hall on iPads or computers, they could and that was, that was literally all we could do. We got the clarity to whereby it could accept real time data. So we got that change as well to make this easier. But the right answer at the hospital, one of our learnings is we need that day to go to the place where it best impacts the workflows of the caregivers. And that would be a centralized app where you could watch numerous people at the same time.

 

Stacey Simms  26:25

Well, if you want a pilot camp, I could probably find several

 

Kevin Sayer  26:29

time we can try that. Maybe

 

Stacey Simms  26:31

before I let you go, I always have to nag you about follow, because Benny is now very responsible doing most of his care. And yet, when I look at the follow app, I would love to note transmitters dying, change this do that any plans to update follow to give a little bit more

 

Kevin Sayer  26:50

where we writing follow as, as I speak, I don't have released a party, but we are and put more of those same features in it. All right,

 

Stacey Simms  26:59

well, we'll circle back on that.

 

Kevin Sayer  27:01

We'll circle back. And I'm sure you'll have requests on follow even when we release the new one. And that's okay. I'm free is very clear, though. And your follow comment is perfect. This truly is becoming an experience, a consumer experience side product, what can we do to make this most engaging for you For you follow would be to have all that data. And I'm confident we can create that experience at some point in time, we need to find the experience that keeps people engaged and keeps them the safest. You know, we took a shot in the dark boy for started because nobody ever done this before. And here's what we can get done. And here's what we'll get out. I think over the next several years, what you'll see what next comments will create experiences that you can create more like your other apps whereby you can click on File, do you want the transmitted information? Yeah. Do you want that? No. Do you want in and literally create a menu and tiles and stuff similar to other software experiences that you have? So that you know that's a longer term goal? We can talk about that on another show.

 

Stacey Simms  27:57

I really appreciate it. I mean, Kevin, you've been accessible for many years to this podcast, and always answering our questions, whether they're the answers that people are hoping for or not, you're really upfront in a way that not every company is. And I do appreciate that. So thank you so much for spending time with me as usual. circle back around, we'll get Benny a haircut. And we'll talk soon.

 

Kevin Sayer  28:17

He can do whatever he wants. But yeah, thanks for having us again.

Stacey Simms:

You're killing me.

 

 

Announcer  28:31

You're listening to Diabetes Connections with Stacey Simms.

 

Stacey Simms  28:36

Lots more information about Dexcom. And some of the other things that Kevin talked about at Diabetes connections.com. And as always, there is a transcript. We've been doing that for every episode in 2020. So if you want to share this with somebody who maybe doesn't want to listen would prefer to read or if that's you, and you're thinking, I want to go back and read all the episodes this year, you can do that, go to Diabetes connections.com. And click on any of the episodes from this year.

I mentioned at the beginning of the show that I would share a little bit of information about how I pick the guests book the guests and ask the questions. This came up in the Diabetes Connections Facebook group, it is Diabetes Connections of the group. I think it's a really good and fair question. And it came up because I posted Hey, Dexcom has asked if they can come on and talk about I believe it was the VA program and the hospital update. Do you have any questions for them? And a listener said if they're telling you what they want to talk about? Isn't that an announcement and not an interview?

Great question. I've been in broadcast journalism since I was 19 years old. And almost every time unless you're enterprising a story unless you're coming up with an idea and following it through. What happens is they will send a news release to you saying, here's what we want to talk about. Here's our big news. Here's what we want to announce. We are making the people available. And then you email back and say, great, I'm going to also ask about other questions. And if you don't agree to that, I'm not doing the interview. Sometimes you have to agree sometimes if you're going to get a particular kind of guest You know, everybody has their own guidelines for this. They make their own decisions for this. I don't think once on the podcast that I've had to do that. And that would be kind of silly. And I would certainly tell you if that was the case, you know, no one has ever said to me, You cannot ask about this.

I do give. And again, this is a little bit more inside information. I do give when I talk to the like, the real life people, when I talk to ordinary people living with diabetes, I tell them off air, hey, if something comes up, that's too personal. Just let me know. And we'll change direction. We won't ask about that. I don't believe I've ever had someone tell me No, I don't want to talk about that. But you know, you understand if I'm talking to just off the top of my head years ago, we talked to this great guy, he has type one, he owns an ice cream shop, his daughter has type one as well, they had a really interesting and kind of cute story. If I get too personal with him, if I started asking personal questions about his daughter, who was a young girl, and he may not want to share everything about their diabetes routine, or their school routine. I mean, we can think of anything he wouldn't want to share, that doesn't really matter to the issues at hand that I'm talking about with him that we're hoping to learn from him. But I don't do that. When I talk to the technology companies or the insulin companies or you know, leaders in our community when you have pressing questions. They don't have to answer the question. But I have to ask the question, and I don't edit that out.

In terms of who comes on the show. I regularly email when there's something in the news. Certainly, all the technology companies, if you have a question for you know, somebody, I'll fire it off to them. I'll say, will you come on. And you know what, I don't hear back from a lot of them. I have been trying to get Abbott to come on the show. Since the middle of the summer. I think we're gonna do it soon. But when Libre2 was approved, I tried to get them to come on. I think Libre3, they're coming on. Omnipod has told me no, we don't have anything to talk about right now. So we don't want to come back on the show right now. And there's nothing really wrong with that. It's frustrating for me, but I do reach out. And I try to get them on as much as I can. So you've let me know, I could do a tech diabetes podcast every week, ignore everything else, and still do great. I don't want to do that. I like talking to the into the wide variety of people that we do. But trust me, I know, they're popular episodes. And I try to get everybody on as much as I can. As I'm ticking off the names, I'm realizing I have to follow up with Tandem. We talked this summer about doing a second episode about best practices with control IQ. And we need to follow up on that as well. So I'm not trying to single anybody out and say they're the bad guys. It's just a matter of following up.

And if you don't know, and this is not an excuse, but just you know, again, as I'm just telling you everything here, this podcast is just me, I do have an editor who's wonderful. I don't have a producer, I don't even have an intern right now. It's just me trying to do everything I do and run other parts of my business as well. And you know, be a mom and do all those cool things. So no excuses. It's wonderful. I love doing it. But I think it's important to be open and honest about the process. I also do know there are groups that will not come on this show, because I asked tough questions. I mean, I think I'm nice. But it has gotten back to me that there are other outlets that are friendlier. There are people that will stick to a list of questions that will blur the line between sponsorship and content. And that's not what we do here. And I can't pretend otherwise.

Alright, if you have any other questions, let me know. I'm happy to answer them Stacey at Diabetes connections.com. I hope all of that made sense. I hope it was interesting to you. I think it's important information. Thank you so much to my editor John Bukenas from audio editing solutions and thank you so much for listening. We will be back in just a couple of days. Tuesday is our regular release day and hey, we have a new episode with Medtronic coming up. We went through all of the recent approvals what’s up next, what's up with their purchase of companion medical the makers of the in pen. So lots of info coming up in that episode, which will be released on Tuesday. Until then, I'm Stacey Simms and be kind to yourself.

 

Benny  33:54

Diabetes Connections is a production of Stacey Simms Media. All rights reserved. All wrongs avenged

 

Transcribed by https://otter.ai