New Glucose testing system

I'd like to get one of these when they become available:

https://www.freestylelibre.co.uk/default.aspx

I searched this product. Seemed amazing. I hope it will be available in Australia soon

http://www.diabetesmine.com/

Cheers

Muna

I seen this on the diabetes.co.uk forum - looks great and I would love it. The chances of the NHS funding it instead of strips though is pretty low for now I would imagine. It seems the sensors only last 2 weeks and cost approx. £48 each. Free strips but finger pricks Vs. £100 a month.

that looks great but very similar to the ipro2 thing they put on you for 7 day monitoring...while i found that very helpful i also found it annoyingly uncomfortable after a few days!

This does look quite good - a sort of half way house between CGM and pricking - I would like to try it out, as pricking is a pain (no real pun here as it doesn't hurt me), but I suspect that the NHS will be slow to adopt. I see that someone is giving a cost of approx £48 per sensor, I suspect the this will drop if other companies come out with rival systems. Approx £100 per month may seem a bit high, but the strips and lancets for the finger pricking also cost the NHS - the companies love to give out the monitors free as then they will make a lot of money from GP's prescribing the strips, and if, as in Type 1 you need to do quite a lot of testing, then this can add up - I did a very quick and rough estimation.

On Amazon - in the US a box of 50 accu-check strips costs $32 - approx £20, and if you did 4 tests a day for an average month of 30 days, this equals 120 strips used - 2 and a half boxes - about £50 per month for the strips.

I didn't do a check on the cost of lancets - as I rarely change mine - yes I know!

So currently strips are very roughly half the cost of this new system, and so I suspect that it will come down to what sort of improvement in lifestyle you can claim will result in using the new sensors and whether the GP thinks that is worth it or not.

I think that many will be able to make a good case - as in driving, it is quick and easy, and will ensure that Type 1 diabetics comply with the DVLA requirements - and therefore help with general road safety. It is less intrusive, for many less painful, the info given helps give an informed view over a period of time - so you can see if the levels are rising or dropping - which can help prevent hypos, less risk of infection, and ultimately may help in long term control which will bring down the cost of long term complications (unfortunately the NHS and GP's don't think long term as they can only deal with budgets for the short term).

Any way, thats my two penneth worth, I would try them if offered.

I saw that price of £48 per sensor somewhere, but it wasn't clear if that was the retail price or trade price. The NHS pay trade price, so I guess around £30 a fortnight. I test 5 or 6 times a day at the moment, which costs the NHS around £45-£50 a month. The sensors would cost the NHS around £60 a month. (If £48 per sensor is the trade price, however, that increases, obviously). The NHS would also save on the cost of lancets (though they're not expensive).
I think it's unlikely they would be allowed unless Abbott could show evidence of definite benefits (i.e. a definite reduction in HbA1c). I also think that they will generate so much data that most people with Diabetes will be unable to use them effectively - for this reason I think, at first anyway, they might only be available for DAFNE graduates.
The NHS commissioning arrangements might mean that availability on of the sensors on prescription is likely to vary from area to area - i.e. there may be a 'postcode lottery' as to whether you can have one or not.

I saw an advert for this system on the back of Balance magazine. I'm on an insulin pump and find I need to do about 10 tests a day so I was very inteerested. Two things put me off : the price, and the fact that if measues interstitial fluid sugar rather than blood sugar so is 15 minutes behind the true blood sugar. Nevertheless only needing to change it every 14 days is an advantage and it is easy to see trends.

The 15 minutes lag time is a fair point, but how often is that really an issue for most people? In terms of accuracy, they claim that the variation from blood glucose is around 10%, and that's better than the variation between different brands of BG test strips.
Sorry, I sound like a salesman for the system - I'm not!

All, I hope to be able to give you all details of this device next week. My consultant has set me up with a trial and I'm meeting someone to have it fitted. I too asked about the sensors on the NHS and was told no but we shall see !! If nothing else it will hopefully give me a more detailed BG trend. Since normal BG readings are only an approximation anyway I am not too worried that it doesn't measure blood directly.

I will let you know how it goes !!

Thanks, Marke, I look forward to hearing your feedback. I'm seriously considering getting one, even if I have to pay for the sensors myself.