Dexcom CEO Kevin Sayer Answers Your Questions

What do we know about the upcoming Dexcom G7? Find out in this conversation with company CEO Kevin Sayer. As usual we have a long list of questions from you covering everything from adhesives to watches to more. Sayer shares details about how they’re preparing for the G7 rollout (it has not yet been submitted to the FDA), as well as issues with Medicare, integration with their current pump partners and when arms will become an approved wear site for US customers.

This podcast is not intended as medical advice. If you have those kinds of questions, please contact your health care provider.

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Episode Transcription below

Stacey Simms 0:00
Diabetes Connections is brought to you by Dario Health: manage your blood glucose levels, increase your possibilities, by Gvoke HypoPen: the first premixed autoinjector for very low blood sugar, and by Dexcom: help make knowledge your superpower with the Dexcom G6 continuous glucose monitoring system.

Announcer 0:23
This is Diabetes Connections with Stacey Simms.

Stacey Simms 0:29
This week, a Dexcom update from the company's CEO. As usual, we have a long list of questions from you, covering everything from adhesives to watches to more about the upcoming G7.

Kevin Sayer 0:41
And the goal is to simplify CGM for everybody across the board. What I often say is everything you love about G6, you'll love more about G7. The size is so small, you don't really recognize it's on your body. It's really a great profile, a little bigger than a nickel.

Stacey Simms 0:56
CEO Kevin Sayer will also share details about how they're preparing for the G7 rollout once it's approved, as well as details about Medicare and use but their pump partners. This podcast is not intended as medical advice. If you have those kinds of questions, contact your health care provider. Welcome to another week of the show, always so glad to have you here. You know, we aim to educate and inspire about diabetes with a focus on people who use insulin. I'm your host, Stacey Simms, my son Benny was diagnosed back in 2006, just before he turned two. He is now 16 and a half. My husband lives with Type 2 Diabetes. I do not have diabetes, but I have a background in broadcasting. And that is how you get the podcast. My usual disclaimer, whenever we have them on, Dexcom is a sponsor of this show, you will hear their commercial later on. It's because we love the products. But when we have people from Dexcom on as guests to give you information, they don't tell me what to ask or what to say outside of that commercial. And I just want to take a minute to say, I very much appreciate Kevin Sayer and others from Dexcom being so accessible over the years, you know, they don't always answer my questions, but at least they come on and address them and listen to them. There are a lot of companies that are very reluctant to even do that, who won't come on the show. And that's really unfortunate because you, as you listen, and you know the diabetes community overall, I'm very much entitled to speak to these people and to these companies. So I will keep pushing nicely, but I'll keep pushing, I promise.

Quick heads up, there will likely be no longer format episode like this one next week. I'm still gonna do the "In the News" episodes that I have added live on Facebook and then turning them into podcast episodes. But I am, as you listen, if you're listening as this episode is going live, I'm at Friends for Life. I'm at that conference. They're having it again. I'm so excited. It's the first diabetes conference I have attended since February, no, since the first week of March of 2020. I went to a JDRF conference in Wilmington, just as COVID was beginning, it was very weird. If you did anything, any kind of public event in March of 2020, you remember that. But I'm back, they're back, I'm at Friends for Life. And I really don't want to rush out an episode. But if anything exciting or you know, breaking news happens or I'm able to record something and put it out, I will. But just a heads up, likely no episode next week.

Alright, and this week, not much of an introduction needed. Kevin Sayer is the CEO of Dexcom. And this interview focuses on some of what came out of the recent ADA scientific sessions and ATTD conferences. But mostly I share your concerns and your questions. We've covered a lot of these issues before, I don't ask a lot of follow up about things that, in my opinion, you can easily Google up. As usual, I had limited time with Sayer, who was doing back-to-back interviews. So if you have a specific question or if things went by very quickly, definitely jump into the Facebook group. You can comment on the post with this episode. We have some amazing members who will answer your questions, who will show you where to find the information. It's likely a previous episode, but we have people in clinical trials, we have people who were in on a lot of the investor calls. They listen, they take notes, they're fantastic. So if you haven't joined Diabetes Connections the group on Facebook, I highly recommend it.

My interview with Kevin Sayer here in just a moment. But first, Diabetes Connections is brought to you by Gvoke HypoPen and you know low blood sugar feels horrible. You can get shaky or sweaty or even feel like you're gonna pass out. There are lots of symptoms and they can be different for everyone. I am so glad we have a different option to treat very low blood sugar. Gvoke HypoPen, it's the first auto-injector to treat very low blood sugar. Gvoke HypoPen is pre-mixed, it's ready to go with no visible needle. Before Gvoke, people needed to go through a lot of steps to get glucagon treatments ready to be used. And this made emergency situations even more challenging and stressful. This is so much better and I'm grateful we have it on hand. Find out more, go to Diabetes-connections.com and click on the Gvoke logo. Gvoke shouldn't be used in patients with pheochromocytoma or insulinoma. Visit gvokeglucagon.com/risk.

Kevin, thank you so much for jumping on with me. Another busy time for you, as so many presentations, lots of studies, lots of news, lots of upcoming and anticipated news. So I appreciate you spending some time with me and my listeners.

Kevin Sayer 5:11
Oh, thank you for having me. It's always fun.

Stacey Simms 5:13
Let's set the table a little bit here. We are following up on the ATTD conference and you are in the midst. Dexcom, as we're speaking of ADA, this is all still virtual though, right?

Kevin Sayer 5:25
It's all still virtual, yeah. I was looking, was hopeful earlier this year it might be in person, but not yet, probably not till next year.

Stacey Simms 5:33
Well, as we look through the news that is coming out of both of these conferences, I could just start out by saying it's kind of, I'm not sure victory lap is the right phrase here. But it does seem that almost every study is basically, Kevin. CGM works, it's good, it helps, we get better outcomes from it. So let me just give you a moment to talk about some of that. Because there were so many, we can't really touch on all those studies.

Kevin Sayer 5:58
There are so many studies, and it's good for a number of different groups as well. You've got all the automated insulin delivery studies, and other than Medtronic's product, all these other studies are powered by Dexcom. You've got stuff in the UK, France, Insulet Tandem in the US, there's a lot of good news on the automated insulin delivery system front. And all these works are powered by Dexcom G6 right now, you've got studies that we presented at ATTD ast week, or that were presented by physicians that we're very well aware of. The mobile study, which was for patients with Type Two Diabetes who are on basal insulin only. You know, when you start a study like that, it's kind of a risk, because you ask yourself the question, "What happens if it doesn't work?" Well, it works. And what we learned is these patients, even though they're not making a decision every four or five, six hours, for eating, they are making decisions about what they eat, and what they do and how they exercise when they can see data. And they can see the effects of what goes on in their lives. And their time in range goes up significantly, if they can see what their time and range is, you know, they've been operating in the dark, and people would argue that they don't need it all the time, like I do. And so that study, we think is just really good and will be the basis, hopefully someday for getting CGM coverage for that group of patients. And so we'll push on that one. There was another study we had last week, or at ATTD. Early in the month, published in Belgium, where a coalition of diabetes gurus I guess, over there's the best I'd call them, it's really all the leaders in the Belgian diabetes community, took a bunch of intermittent CGM users and put them on Dexcom G6 for an extended period of time. And then we looked to see what happened. And what we saw is on real time CGM, the patients are better in every category, every single category, time in range, hyper(glycemia), hypo(glycemia), you name it, they did better. So we really did validate the Dexcom equation over competitors with that study. And we think it's very important and they realize real time CGM, it is important, it is important for data (to) be accessible. And the alerts are something that you can use. There are other studies being presented by other people in the Type Two, Arena-Kiser's got a study where they show patients do well on, Doulas got several studies, they're across the board. And the evidence is building for these other markets. But it starts at the beginning, obviously with automated insulin delivery and, and we work our way down. But we've had information presented across the board showing the utility of Dexcom. And if you've been to this study, this meeting 10 years ago, like I was when I first started here, my literally, my first month was my first Dexcom ADA, nobody even knew who we were. And those who did said yeah, the product's not real great. So times have changed pretty dramatically.

Stacey Simms 8:41
Do you remember what that first study that was presented at ADA or ATTD? Which one it was that you were there for 10 years ago? I'm curious of that.

Kevin Sayer 8:50
Back in the day?

Stacey Simms 8:50
Yeah.

Kevin Sayer 8:51
First study, we didn't even present studies. Back then, we, I will tell you the most important study we did, we did a study in where we first got ADA recognition, we did a study with our G4 system against a competitor in Europe. And we got a bunch of recognition there. And then the next study that really got us a lot of recognition in ADA meeting was our DIaMonD study where we show the people on multiple daily injections. If they went to CGM, they would get much better results. What it was hard for me to learn is you don't say I want to do a study like this and get it done in a week. It takes a couple of years to accumulate all the proper data, process it, develop all the subsets and everything. And so my patience has been has been level set with respect to studies like this. And there's multiple studies going on in the field that will be presented over the next several years.

Stacey Simms 9:44
All right. Well, that's a really good segue to moving ahead, because, as you know, my listeners are very interested in this technology. And the slide that probably got the most attention in our groups was one that was presented at ATTD about introducing the Dexcom G7, showing all of the features of this. So let me, I'm not going to go through all of them, obviously. And you and I've talked about this many times before, but faster warm up. It's smaller, simple application, all in one. This is all still part of the plan, as we had talked about before.

Kevin Sayer 10:19
Oh, yes.

Stacey Simms 10:19
Okay.

Kevin Sayer 10:20
Yeah. And, you know, we started working on the G7 before G6 was even in clinical trials. The G7 is a project we've envisioned for a long time, Verily, actually it was Google Health before then, Verily was a partner with us in designing this product, and we (were) working out for quite some time. And the goal is to simplify CGM for everybody across the board, what I often say is everything you love about G6, you'll love more about G7, the size is so small, you don't really recognize that it's on your body. It's really a great profile, a little bigger than a nickel. We're running this study with arm and abdomen indications. And while patients wear them wherever they want, we're going to show you that it can be worn wherever you want. And I think that's a big deal, that we go ahead and do the work to do that. The faster warmup is kind of mind-blowing when you put a G7 up and then you look after you pair it. And then you look and see you only got 25 minutes left, it's like, oh, wow, I don't have to do the two hour countdown. You know the accuracy and performance that Jake presented at ATTD shows that we're not, we're not ever going to go easier on the performance side and say good enough, we always push ourselves to offer something that will keep people safe and confident with what they have. The app is completely new, we'll build things into the app over time, like automated, the frequently asked questions feature we have now but we're just gonna keep making it better. Some of the features of our Clarity system will ultimately be in the app. So you'll get more information. When you go to it and look at it out of the get go. You know, we'll get it approved. It'll be a while before our partners have integrated their systems. But we're working with Insulet and Tandem already on G7 integration, it'll be able to talk to multiple devices at the same time. Its manufacturing cost ultimately will be less expensive. It's been designed for an automated process. And we've got fully automated lines up and running to assemble the G7 sensors. We have, in fairness, have automated G6 lines up and running now too, but we've got special transmitter lines and center lines and those kinds of things. It is going to be, a really, the most advanced CGM ever.

Stacey Simms 12:25
Well, you've touched on a couple of listener questions already in that testing alternate sites, including arms, integration with the systems that are already using G6, so I don't want to spend a lot of time going in depth on things that you've mentioned. But in the slide it said direct to watch capability.

Right back to Kevin clarifying what was meant in that slide. But first, Diabetes Connections is brought to you by Dario Health and bottom line, you need a plan of action with diabetes. We've been lucky that Benny's endo has helped us with that and that he understands the plan has to change as Benny he gets older, you want that kind of support so take your diabetes management to the next level with Dario. Their published studies demonstrate high impact results for active users like improved in-range percentage within three months, reduction of A1C within three months and a 58% decrease in occurrences of severe hyperglycemic events. Try Dario's diabetes success plan and make a difference in your diabetes management. Go to https://mydario.com/diabetes-connections for more proven results and for information about the plan. Now back to Kevin Sayer, answering my question about what the company means when it says the Dexcom G7 has direct to watch capability.

Kevin Sayer 13:44
Capability. Yeah, it won't go there first pass. But we had to have different electronics and a different radio set to go direct to watch than what we have in G6. And it's easier to get us to change than it is to get Apple changed or to change their watch. And so as we were doing the G7 system, we did contemplate that. So it is configured to do so, I do not believe it's in the first release. But it will be not long after that. We'll have a direct to watch capability. And we know people really want that, the watch presents interesting problems. And we can all sit and say we want that. But you have to charge your watch every day or at least every 36 hours. Where are you getting your alerts if you're direct to watch and it's on the charger? And you're in different parts of your house? There's complexities to the watch that go far beyond just direct to connect. And particularly with the FDA who've used the alerts in the alarms and the connectivity is so important that we had to make sure we do it right. So we'll work on that and get it wired appropriately. But I look, I know what something I would want If I were a user. So we continue to push for it.

Stacey Simms 14:44
Just to follow up on that. When you say it won't be in the first iteration of it but you know, it'll be, it's capable, it'll come, that it kind of implies that you figured out what to do with the alerts and alarms when someone hangs it up to charge.

Kevin Sayer 14:56
I don't know what they have figured out. I just know they're addressing it all. I have to plead the fifth, I just, as I've asked that question, they said, "Well, here's a problem. How are you going to deal with that?" I said, "Well, you guys don't have to tell me." They'll come up with the right answer, Stacey.

Stacey Simms 15:09
Alright, so, I'm sure they will, but to say direct to watch capability, there's a little parentheses that says when we figure it out,

Kevin Sayer 15:15
Oh, I know we're working on it, but...

Stacey Simms 15:17
Okay.

Kevin Sayer 15:18
But Stacey, we couldn't even go direct to watch before with the electronics. We couldn't go direct to watch with a G6 transmitter, the G7 electronics stack and configuration is such that it can go direct to the watch, we could not with G6.

Stacey Simms 15:32
Okay. Many more questions. My listeners are very, of course, interested in the adhesive changes. Is the G6 to G7 change, I know you're addressing this, I know you're testing it, we've got emails from people who are in different trials for adhesive and reactions and things like that. And I have lots of questions, people say it's getting better, other people say it's getting worse. Anecdotally, it's very difficult, obviously, for me to know. Talk to me a little bit about those changes and how it's improving.

Kevin Sayer 15:58
Well, we've tested numerous adhesives before we landed on the adhesive we selected for G7. One of the reasons we kept the product life down to 10 days is to make sure we have enough adhesive to get to that 10 days. We'll be putting the overpatch in every box. So if somebody wants an overpatch, they don't have to call us. So everybody should be thrilled with that one. And it's quite easy to use, we're hopeful that there's no allergy with G7. Somebody's always gonna have a reaction, that's just physiology, but we're working with new tapes for G6 already, where it will hopefully have something. The things that cause a lot of the allergic reaction in G6 we've eliminated from the G7 manufacturing process. So we're hopeful that a lot of this stuff goes away on its own, we'll monitor it very quickly. But we've already got four or five other G7 adhesives in test in addition to the ones that we're going to launch with, to make sure we can create better options in the future if we need to. So, you know, stay tuned on that one, we are comfortable. As I sit here, we will not have the same level of reaction that we would have at G6 when we change it. But yeah, we won't know till we're out there.

Stacey Simms 17:09
Yeah. And you mentioned the 10-day wear and part of that being for adhesive. But my understanding is that the idea is for 14-day wear for Dexcom G7.

Kevin Sayer 17:19
Eventually.

Stacey Simms 17:20
Eventually.

Kevin Sayer 17:21
Eventually, not again, not first pass. We'll get it approved with 10-day data, very important to us is that we provide our customers with the experience they paid for and they signed up for. And we've looked at competitors' reliability data, how many make it out to 14 days, or how many make it to seven days if they only have seven, and we look at, it's one of the key management indicators, we monitor how many of our sensors are making it out to 10 days, and we've set a pretty high bar for how we want our system to work. And while we could have launched a longer lasting product, we wouldn't have hit the percentages with the configuration that we have. And so we said, OK, 10 days is enough. Our patient base is fine with 10 days as long as we deliver on the 10 days that we promise. And we'll get into longer live trials literally as soon as we're done with these and hopefully move it over. Because that does cost us a lot less and give us more pricing flexibility over time for the various groups. But for now we'll go 10 days, mainly, so we have more reliability. That's the biggest reason.

Stacey Simms 18:22
I have a few more G7 questions, but they're about pricing and accessibility.

Kevin Sayer 18:26
Well, I, you know what I can, I can't answer most of them...

Stacey Simms 18:28
Okay.

Kevin Sayer 18:29
...because we can't really go address pricing until it's approved.

Stacey Simms 18:32
Right.

Kevin Sayer 18:33
And we have as we put our G6 contracts together over the past couple of years, done so in anticipation of a G7 product to whereby, for example, for Medicare, it's a fixed charge per month. And for many of our insurance contracts, it's resembling more that type of business arrangement, we're hopeful that we can transition to G7 very quickly. But we will have to go to all your payers and get G7 covered before they'll pay for it. We're hopeful that'll be a quick process. But in the meantime, G6 is a great product and people will be able to use it. I can't give you a timeframe as to how long that'll take, we'll have to go to CMS, we'll have to go to all the Medicaid groups as well. What we're trying to avoid, and let me repeat what I don't want to deal with, is one of the things I dealt with with the G6 for a long time, we didn't have enough inventory of production capacity to get it to every group. So the Medicare population was stuck with G5 for quite some time. Those emails were not good. We want to make sure it's equal access when we can get it in the channel for everybody. And we're trying to build that type of capacity.

Stacey Simms 19:34
A couple of "what-if?" questions, just kind of looking down the road. JDRF recently announced that they are looking for and this is the very beginning. So as you listen or as you're watching, this is not in the works yet, this is a call for research, that they are looking for a CGM that could also measure ketones, and I haven't seen any companies step up yet publicly to say yes, we're working on that, we'd like to be part of that. Is that anything that Dexcom is thinking of doing?

Kevin Sayer 20:02
We've explored this for quite some time long before the JDRF initiative. And the question I keep asking, is continuous ketone measurement important? We know that for the pediatric world, that if you measure ketones continuously, you might predict dangerous DKA moment before it happens. But at what cost to the system? And is there a cost benefit associated with this? So we're setting all those things. We're in the learning phases, we think we have a platform that can do that. But we've got to decide do you sacrifice glucose accuracy? If you throw a ketone sensor on there? There's a lot of answers we don't have yet. But we're in the early phases. And we've talked with JDRF and others about it, is there a better way to measure ketones that might be easier and less expensive? I don't know. We've looked at several other analytes to go with our system over time. And I think in the future, that'll be something but that's not coming from us for at least three years, if not longer.

Stacey Simms 20:56
Got it. You've looked at other...

Kevin Sayer 20:58
Analytes

Stacey Simms 20:59
Analytes, tell me about what else has been looked at just for, you know.

Kevin Sayer 21:03
Well, I won't go into all of them. I certainly look at lactate from a stress level. And for physical fitness, for example, there are a lot of athletes who'd like us to produce a lactate sensor to whereby they can measure the progress of their physical fitness. There's also a use for lactate in the hospital environment with we think with respect to predicting sepsis over time, but those are you know, that's one of them. And we've looked at a few others and failed, I won't go into all those.

Stacey Simms 21:31
That's okay.

Kevin Sayer 21:31
We've looked at some that may be promising. What we find from time to time is yeah, what we'd love to measure but we can't is insulin on our wire. If there are any way we could measure insulin in addition to glucose, wouldn't that be awesome? We know exactly how much insulin you have on board. And we know exactly well, we, we've not been successful at that one. That would require different technology than what we have. So we look at all of them. And over time, we think we'll have some good stuff there. But not for a while.

Stacey Simms 22:00
Um, you know, you mentioned hospitalizations. And last year we talked about the CGM program in hospitals. Forgive me I, there were so many studies at ADA and ATTD, I don't know if this was presented. But let me ask a general, how is it going? Are hospitals adopting and adapting to using a CGM?

Kevin Sayer 22:16
They are adopting and adapting is harder than adopting.

Stacey Simms 22:19
Yeah.

Kevin Sayer 22:20
Because, you know, this is a device that was designed for your listeners. And for you. It wasn't a device that was designed to be used in a hospital room. With all of the cybersecurity and connectivity issues of a hospital, where do we send the information? How do we get it there? And so we've got to solve the workflow issue to make this meaningful in the hospital environment over time. What we have learned is our technology is more than good enough to go there. And that the places particularly where you have an endocrinologist very heavily involved in treating the diabetes patients in the hospital rather than a cardiologist or somebody else, when there's an endocrinologist involved, we can go very quickly, they can learn. Some of the hospitals would take an approach, let's put this on everybody. Others would only take an approach, let's put this on severe cases. So there have been different protocols used. But by and large, the response to CGM in the hospital has been very, very good. And we think it is a great market for us over time, we've got to work on the proper configuration for workflow. I mean, one of the best examples, how do you get the data to the medical record? Because everything in the hospital goes to the medical record. How do we make that seamless? We haven't figured that out yet. And that'd be important for all of our users even outside the hospital. Imagine how much easier would be to go to your doctor and have your Dexcom data already sitting in the medical record when you get there. We're not there yet. But we're having a lot of good discussions on that front.

Stacey Simms 23:41
Got it. One of the topics that's been kind of in the community recently, and I don't think it's so much Dexcom. But I want to ask you, anyway, is this issue of and you mentioned, athletes who want to measure certain things, of people without diabetes, using Flash glucose monitoring, or continuous glucose monitoring. I'm curious is that a market that Dexcom is looking to pursue? I mean, the G7 is smaller, it's lighter. And you know that I'm asking this because we've talked many times before. People who use insulin are very much afraid of not being able to afford, being left behind if many, many, many people who may not use it in the same way, start adopting these products.

Kevin Sayer 24:19
Let me address that in a couple of steps. Let's talk about the use case first. There are people, a lot of people using Dexcom, who do not have diabetes, as a health and wellness tool. And there are a number of apps that are being developed that require glucose information to level set your nutrition. Now, possibly Type Two diabetes or prediabetes, but there are groups and some groups with some very interesting ideas as to how to change your diet based on glucose data to make you healthier. We were used many years ago on The Biggest Loser with every patient that came in the door and one of the production people, I don't remember which one, might have even been the physician, came to me and said, "You need to get out of the diabetes business. You can make a lot more money in weight loss." Well, we're not getting out of the diabetes business, that's where we are and where we stay. One of the things we've contemplated with G7 is the fact that we're going to go to more people. And we're going to go to more people than just the Type One population. We plan on having capacity to build over 200 million sensors, before the end of 2023. 200 million sensors is gonna be more than enough for the intensive insulin using community. And as far as cost, well cost comes down if we can sell that much in volume. Now,

Stacey Simms 25:29
Well, hello...

Kevin Sayer 25:29
I would also argue...

Stacey Simms 25:30
You're in the American healthcare system, Kevin. You know this is not a market-based device, we don't...

Kevin Sayer 25:36
I'm aware, I'm aware of that.

Stacey Simms 25:38
I'll let you finish, I'm sorry.

Kevin Sayer 25:39
Let me keep going. At the end of the day, as you look at what somebody pays for taking care of themselves with delivering insulin and powering the insulin pump, that's a very complex task that requires a lot of customer service and support. If somebody is only losing weight, that's a different problem we're trying to solve, or if somebody is trying to titrate a Type Two drug, that's a different problem. I think we can find a way to make everybody happy. I don't think we're gonna disappoint anybody. And we planned this company and built this company to make sure that we have capacity to do all this, it's, you know. It's, one would look at me, I mean, we're gonna spend over a billion dollars on these factories over the next two, three years here. This is not a simple endeavor, it is a large investment. And this technology first goes to the community that we serve, now worldwide. We have to expand worldwide, but get it to the group in the US as well. After that, we'll go the other places, but we're going to have more than enough capacity to do that. In fact, one might question if I'm insane, or we're insane to create so much capacity and the 200 million, quite candidly, the wave design, the G7 lines, if we need to sample at a factory, we can do it very quickly. So this is a, this is a long term play for us. We believe this technology be beneficial to a number of people. And so if we can get, if we can get all these sensors out there and all these uses, I think it'll benefit your audience more than it'll detract from.

Stacey Simms 27:00
I know we're going to run out of time. I've got two more questions. You've mentioned,

Kevin Sayer 27:03
You got them, I'll give you time for two questions. Let's finish.

Stacey Simms 27:06
Okay, alright.

Kevin Sayer 27:07
Finish the way you want.

Stacey Simms 27:09
You mentioned already, lots of different apps are being developed, not all diabetes. You know, a couple years ago, Dexcom announced the availability of the API, you know, developers can get data through third party apps. I'm curious, is there anything going on maybe behind the scenes? Or are you doing anything further to kind of foster more innovation in the early stage, like the development of other companies? Or is that a thing of the past?

Kevin Sayer 27:31
No, I'll give you two things that we're doing. Number one, we have a live API use where you can have a live display of the data. That's on file with the agency right now, it'll eventually get approved. So you'll be able to run the Dexcom app, data'll go to the cloud, comes straight down to another one. I think that is a very good use of the technology and it shows our willingness to work with others. So that is a good use. One of the other things we have coming, then we'll see where it goes. Our intended use case in the beginning was with major healthcare systems. But we have another app that we've shown pictures of, it's an app inside an app. So let's say for example, you go to Scripts here in San Diego, I'll pick Scripts, and Scripts has their own healthcare app. And they also want to be the center of your diabetes care, particularly for Type Two diabetes, and they might have you wearing a sensor for something other than isulin delivery. We've developed an app that can reside inside another app, to whereby you can have your Scripts experience, but you can touch an icon and you go to a Dexcom experience. And it, it's an app that resides inside the app and for security, we're able to keep others out. That app inside the app concept is nothing we've done to commit to others, to give them an opportunity to use Dexcom technology in a different way. And yet preserving create their own experiences. We're very cognizant of the fact that we can't solve every problem, and there might be better experiences. And we can create. Okay, got time for one more.

Stacey Simms 28:54
All right, last question. And it's more of a request. But the question is when you, and this is from a couple of listeners, when you start rolling out the G7, any consideration for including and this may be an insurance question too, one extra sensor a year? So three in a month.

Kevin Sayer 29:10
What a wonderful question. And let me tell you something, we spend an inordinate amount of time analyzing sensor failure and returns and those types of things. We have run models that say if we give everybody, if we just gave everybody x more sensors a year, we could avoid all the phone calls and all of the issues and all that stuff. We analyze this warranty policy all the time. And I think what you'll see with G7, we'll have better tools. My hope someday just for your users, I would love to just diagnose this in the app in general, to whereby if your sensor fails, we know when we say your sensor failed, tap on this icon to get a new one. The flip side of that is we have a business to run and we can't do all free centers. So if it comes to the time, if you buy 12 months for the sensors, and pay for 12 months for the sensors, let's make sure you get 12 months worth of use. And if that means we ship you a free one because one failed, that's fine. But we're still, you know, we found one patient in another country, I won't say which one, they got 48 free sensors and purchased all of three, because they spent all this time. Those are the far exceptions from the rule, people will just want care. And so we are doing everything we can to come up with better policies to make it easier for you. Because quite honestly, those phone calls cost us way more money and they cause you guys frustration, we are going to make this better over time. That's a promise I can make. And let's talk about it in a future conversation and I'll tell you some of the things we've done.

Stacey Simms 30:35
All right, we'll hold up for a baker's dozen one of these days. But Kevin, thank you so much. You're always very accessible...

Kevin Sayer 30:41
Thank you.

Stacey Simms 30:41
...and I really do appreciate your time.

Announcer 30:48
You're listening to Diabetes Connections with Stacey Simms.

Stacey Simms 30:54
Lots of more information at Diabetes-connections.com. If you haven't seen it yet, a while back Dexcom sent me what they call a sizzle reel of their G7, what it looks like. So I'll put that video in the show notes as well. We have a YouTube channel. I don't put a lot of extra stuff there. But things like that Dexcom video, and the "In the News," you can watch it if you'd prefer, I always put that on YouTube. And all these episodes are there as well, although they're mostly just the audio, but a lot of people listen, watch, they listen that way on YouTube. So that'll be linked up in the show notes. And I realized I haven't mentioned it on the show yet. But you know, this time of year getting your Dexcom or getting any gear to stick can be difficult, lots of wet and sweat in the summer. And I've created a guide, seven top tips to get your diabetes gear to stick in the hot summer. Over the years, we've tried so many things. Benny has had a pump since he was two. He's had a Dexcom since he was nine. So a lot of, you know, trial and error. And this guide is available, absolutely free. So I will put a link in the show notes. If you get the newsletter, you may have already seen it. But just in case you don't. And the show notes are always at Diabetes-connections.com. Every episode has its own homepage with a transcription, started that in 2020 and we are working our way back. If you're listening on a podcast app, there are shownotes there, but in case you have problems with links or whatever, you can always go to the episode homepage.

And as I mentioned, Diabetes Connections is brought to you by Dexcom. It is hard to remember what things were like before we started using the Dexcom. I just said Benny was nine, right? But he had diabetes for seven years before we started using it. And I guess I haven't really forgotten what that was like. But it's just so different now. When he was a toddler, we were doing something like 10 finger sticks a day. And even when he got older, we still did at least six to eight every day, more when he wasn't feeling well or when something was off. But with each iteration of Dexcom, we have done fewer and fewer sticks. The latest generation the Dexcom G6 eliminates finger sticks for calibration and diabetes treatment decisions. Just thinking about Benny's little worn out fingertips makes me so glad that Dexcom has helped us come so far. It's an incredible tool. And Benny's fingertips are healthy and smooth, which I never thought would happen when he was in preschool. If your glucose alerts and readings from the G6 do not match symptoms or expectations, use a blood glucose meter to make diabetes treatment decisions. Learn more, go to Diabetes-connections.com and click on the Dexcom logo.

As I mentioned at the top of the show, I am at Friends for Life right now as you're listening. If you're listening as this goes live, on the day that it goes out there, I'm traveling to Friends for Life, and I'll be here for the week. If you're not familiar, this is the largest family diabetes conference in the country. It takes place every July in beautiful Orlando, it's so hot, but it's a great time, it's on the Disney World property. I don't usually go to the parks if my kids aren't coming. They're not coming with me this year, so I doubt I will be going into a Disney park. But it's a fabulous conference. And I just want to let you know, I'm doing a new presentation. I'm working up some new stuff. I'm very excited about it. And this one is called "Reframe your Diabetes Parent Brain." And I gotta tell you, I am really sick and tired of seeing people berate themselves and talk about mom fail and tell themselves how terrible they are as parents. So this is going to be a session where we talk about the mistakes we've made. But then I want to help people reframe them so that they see what they've learned. You know, my whole philosophy is you mess up and you learn. And that's what this is all about. So I'm really excited to try it out. Will it go over well? I don't know. You know, I think so many diabetes parents are so wrapped up in perfect now that they feel like if they go above 120 or 150 that they failed their children. So, gosh, I feel really passionate about it. And we're going to try that. And then for the fall, I've been getting a lot of questions about sending kids to camp, and I've gotten more and more of these over the years. You know, how do I send my Type One kid to regular sleepaway camp. So I'm working on a presentation about that because fall, August, September, is when a lot of people sign their kids up for next summer. So as you listen, if you're affiliated with a group that does meetups or zoom calls, or in-person conferences, let me know. I would love to speak to you and start these dialogues and help you really help your kids thrive with Type One. We're not done. We're far from done, right? Benny's 16. But you know, he's a confident and happy kid. So knock wood. Where's all my wood to knock? I say all the superstitious stuff, right? I mean, I don't kid, you know how superstitious I am. But I really hope that I can help other parents. You know, the idea here is that you don't worry. The idea here is that you do it anyway.

All right. Thank you so much for joining me. Thank you, as always to my editor, John Bukenas from Audio Editing Solutions. I will see you back here in a couple days for the "In the News" episode, but again, no long format episode, the following week. Alright, I'm Stacey Simms. Until then, be kind to yourself.

Benny 35:49
Diabetes Connections is a production of Stacey Simms Media. All rights reserved, all wrongs avenged.