News: MIT researchers develop a way to inject drugs at near speed of sound without needles
MIT scientists are developing a needle-less injection technology that could see doctors administering drugs using a tiny high-pressured jet in future. Researchers unveiled a device this week that eliminates the use of needles by delivering drugs into tissue using a high-pressured stream right into the skin.
The technology will benefit those who are afraid of needles or who have to frequently self-inject says Catherine Hogan, a research scientist at MIT. "We think this kind of technology … gets around some of the phobias that people may have about needles." Drugs can be fired out at almost the speed of sound at around 340 meters per second, with a wide variety of volumes and velocities supported. MIT's jet technology is of a similar diameter to a mosquito proboscis, which many humans do not feel entering their skin, so the injections will be painless.
Ways to create painless needles have been explored before by other scientists using patches or reshaping the traditional needle, but MIT feels its latest technology allows it to breach the skin at different velocities and with varying amounts of doses in a highly controlled way. MIT is also working on a similar version of the device to turn powdered form drugs into a "fluidized" form to be delivered into the skin like a liquid.
2012 Blogger Summit at Lilly Diabetes
Social media is a powerful communication and connection tool. A message on twitter can reach countless people. FaceBook posts receive 'likes', get 'shared' and suddenly people that you've never met know that you support a cause, watched a video or have an opinion. Being connected in these ways is the new normal to those of us that live a part of our lives online and not surprisingly, companys have noticed.
I never imagined that writing about my life as a type I diabetes caregiver would lead to being invited to Lilly's first diabetes blogger summit but that is just what happened. I didn't know what to expect but I knew that the invitation felt like an oppurtunity to represent, as best that I could, the needs of our community.
It wasn't my intention to spend the day taking detailed notes or to report back to you that 'this' or 'that' was said. I wanted to experience the day, lend my thoughts when I thought that they would add to the discussion and see what good could come from the meeting for people like us.
I believe that businesses are mainly created to generate a positive cash flow and that there isn't anything wrong with a company making a profit. That's what my head thinks about buisness. My heart wants something different. In my opinion, companies that make a living in certain walks of life should do so with as much compassion for their customers as their shared situation allows. Making insulin, lancets and other diabetes devices is one such situation. From research and development to an attractive box on your pharmacy shelf, much goes into the development of safe and effective diabetes treatments and devices. I want the company that imagines and develops those things to be compensated. I want their employees to make a fair wage and I think their shareholders should see growth and sustainability. That again, is what my head thinks.
My heart feels that people living with a chronic illness shouldn't be looked upon as a constant cash flow opportunity even though they are. Companies that make the things that keep us alive need to be respectful of the backs that they make their profits on. They also should make allowances for the people that can not, in any way, afford the medications and devices that sustain their lives. It's the right thing to do.
A cynic may say that pharma companies invite bloggers like me to visit so that I'll leave with a positive view of their company, so that I'll write on my website that they are good guys that just want us to be happy. Well, I'm not a cynic but I do think that Lilly and every other company is beholden to their bottom line. The thing is, I didn't meet with a company last week, I met with people that work at a company and these people hold geniune concern and compassion for the diabetes community and the people that make it up. I'd like insulin to be cheaper but I also need for it to remain available. Therein lies the balance that I hoped to see when I visited Lilly and I did.
The building was steeped in tradition but the people inside, the employees, they were focused on today. Something amazing is happening right now in pharma as it relates to consumers. For the first time perhaps, they see the value in us as people and that's a good thing for us. We are no longer customers, never again to be thought of as patients - we are people. We can't and shouldn't blame pharma for taking so long to come to this seemingly obvious conclusion... they didn't know us until recently. How did they finally come to make our acquaintance? Social media introduced us.
Social media is how and why this summit came to be, it gave us all a name and a face, it's how we went from being customers whose dollars were coveted to people whose health outcomes are now followed with great interest and dare I say, real concern. Lilly wants to connect with us and even though I realize that many of you will meet their interest with skepticism, I say that we should embrace this new turn. As long as we continue to ask hard questions as a community and demand that our voices be heard, this new and direct connection to the companies that produce our diabetes supplies should and will be a mutually beneficial one. I'm optimistic and interested to see where this new sensibility takes us.
I'll be talking about the particulars from the day in my next few posts.
Hope you are all well!
Disclosure: I attended an event hosted by Lilly Diabetes, who paid for my airfare, travel, hotel and meals while I was in Indianapolis.
You can find my continuing thoughts from the blogger summit here.
It's raining in Newark
On my way home from the 'Blogger Summit' with Lilly Diabetes and my plane keeps getting delayed. Listening to my jams and thinking about my next blog post. Hoping to bring you all a recap that really makes you feel like you were there with me. It was interesting... In many more ways then I imagined. I think that you'll find it very interesting too. Talk to you soon, Scott
Diabetes Blog Week, Day 2
Diabetes Blog Week, Day 2, "One Great Thing"
Today's Topic:
Living with diabetes (or caring for someone who lives with it) sure does take a lot of work, and it’s easy to be hard on ourselves if we aren’t “perfect”. But today it’s time to give ourselves some much deserved credit. Tell us about just one diabetes thing you (or your loved one) does spectacularly! Fasting blood sugar checks, oral meds sorted and ready, something always on hand to treat a low, or anything that you do for diabetes. Nothing is too big or too small to celebrate doing well!
I am going to make myself uncomfortable and do two things that I abhor. The first and admittedly easier part, I'm going to write to the prompt. Second and much more difficult, I'm going to unapologetically say nice stuff about myself.
- I think I do a good job of sharing what it's like to be a parent of a child with type I diabetes. I see being this transparent as a public service and it makes me proud that Arden's Day helps people.
- I can basal away a high or low BG in a way that makes me feel like dropping confetti on my own head.
- Arden's A1c is in range.
- It still remains to be seen but I truly believe that the greatest thing that I will ever do (as it relates to diabetes and excluding caring for Arden) is to imagine 'Arden's Day Gives'
Thanks to @alsophil for our logo!
The interactions that I've had on this blog led me to believe that while there are many obstacles that we all face while living with type I diabetes, one of them bothered me more then the rest. I was startled by the number of voices that I heard online that want devices to help them manage their type I but can not, even though a great many of them are insured, afford to use them. After much soul searching and some timely input from others I came to the conclusion that I could be the one to effect this issue and we set about forming a non profit to do just that.
On April 17, 2012 'Arden's Day Gives" was granted it's incorporation status from the state of New Jersey and we are currently in the process of applying for charitable status from the federal government. The process is a long and complicated one but we are making our way through it quite nicely.
I hope Arden's Day Gives can serve as an example to you that your thoughts are only one physical action away from being tangible. I took a word on a digital page and turned it into an entity for good. Though ADG is still just a FaceBook page that's under construction, a twitter account and a URL that doesn't point anywhere yet, it is closer to helping the children in our community that need it most then it may appear.
So far what I've done amounts to not much more then a raised seal on some paperwork but that's just the part that you can touch. In the feeling world, in the place where hope lives, it's already "great"!
I hope that you can follow Arden's Day Gives at one or all of the ways that I provided above. Very soon we will launch a website at www.ardensdaygives.org, be announcing our board members and with some luck be in possession of a 501(c)3 distinction by the end of the year. After that we will seek support from where ever we can find it and then go about doing the work of getting insulin pumps and continuous glucose monitors to the children that want and need them.
http://twitter.com/ArdensDayGives
http://www.facebook.com/ArdensDayGives
Diabetes Blog Week 2012
It's that time of year again... Diabetes Blog Week is upon us. Each day of blog week diabetes bloggers all around the world sit down and write from a prompt found at 'Bitter Sweet'.
Diabetes Blog Week, Day 2, "Find a Friend"
Today's topic is:
It seems the most popular thing about Diabetes Blog Week is that it helps us find blogs we weren’t reading yet and connect with some new blog friends. With that in mind, let’s kick off Diabetes Blog Week by making some new connections. Think about the d-blogs you read that you think we may not know about and introduce us to one that you love!! Let’s all find a new friend today!
Today's prompt makes me think about how sharing on the internet was once thought of. At one time no one gave their real name online, opting to go by a nom de plume for secrets sake. If you've been online for any measure of time you have undoubtedly corresponded with Boba Fett's Uncle_987642 or partygirl_5678930987 at least once.
Today it seems like everyone is online and between FaceBook and blogs like this one it can feel like they all share everything about themselves. In the circles I exist in through my computer knowing full names and the places where people that you've never met in person live is common. Folks list their phone numbers on FaceBook and give out their email addresses like they were balloons at a fair. It all seems so normal now to most.
but not everyone...
People like me who share some of the more personal moments in their lives can lose sight of the fact that not everyone is as comfortable as we are doing so. In my mind the DOC is made up of the blogs, PodCasts and web sites that I'm aware of. That's the physical place that I imagine in my head. It's populated by the people that run, write and talk about diabetes in this digital world but it's life force is all of the people that read and follow. I certainly can't be aware of each and every blog and there is no true way for me to quantify the real number of people that read and benefit from them but I imagine that number to be large but not nearly as large as it could or perhaps should be.
As a group we are all very comfortable with computers and smart phones and it's no issue for those of us that share to be transparent in front of the world wide web. However, there is a larger number of us that can't or don't want to say hello. Those people are being well served by reading what the rest put into the world and that's not just okay, it's fabulous!
I'm never going to meet most of you and I'm quite sure that a great many of you that read this will never take any sort of physical form in front of me whether that means an avatar or a handshake. So to all of you that will forever look like a tick mark on the counter that measures how many people visit Arden's Day I say, "hello friend even though we don't talk, I'm comforted that you are there".
**If you've gotten this far you are likely wondering why I didn't seem to write to the prompt. The short answer is that I don't do well in that situation... I don't write well to prompts but I do love Diabetes Blog Week! Stop back tomorrow to see how I'll loosely connect Tuesday's topic to something I want to say...
You are but a click away from reading my Day 2 post from Diabetes Blog Week 2012...