Apple iPhone Game-Changing New Health Feature Cleared By FDA, Coming In Weeks – Forbes

JUNE 2021: In this photo illustration, a dark-haired young woman with a blue top and flowe skirt … [+] lays on outdoor couch checking her insulin pump. (Photo Illustration by Matt Harbicht/Getty Images for Tandem Diabetes Care)
A new app is coming this Spring which will be game-changing for diabetes care. As reported by The Verge, a smartphone app from Tandem Diabetes Care to program insulin delivery for its t:slim X2 insulin pump is the first-ever smartphone app for both iOS and Android to be able to deliver insulin.
Until now, the delivery had to be handled by the pump itself. The benefits are obvious: the user won’t need to remove a pump from an undergarment, say, to action a delivery of insulin. or even to let anyone know it’s there, simply making the delivery happen via the app.
“Giving a meal bolus is now the most common reason a person interacts with their pump, and the ability to do so using a smartphone app offers a convenient and discrete solution,” John Sheridan, president and CEO of Tandem Diabetes Care, said.
Tandem Diabetes Care also said in a statement released on February 16, “When released, this new feature will be offered in the United States for no additional cost to new t:slim X2 insulin pump customers and to in-warranty customers through a remote software update for the t:slim X2 insulin pump and the updated t:connect mobile app. The Company intends to roll out the mobile bolus feature update throughout the spring in a series of limited launch groups, followed by an expanded launch later this summer. Limited launch participants have already been selected.”
The app displays the user’s pump information on the iPhone or Android phone, which is obviously a more discreet and subtle way to access this information than on the pump itself. It also shows glucose trends, pump status changes and alarms, uploading data securely to the cloud.
The company also says: “To ensure compatibility, Tandem verifies each combination of device and operating system works as intended to program and cancel a bolus from your smartphone. This means that not every smartphone will be able to use the bolus feature within the t:connect mobile app. More information is available at www.tandemdiabetes.com.”
Apple has big interest in this area of healthcare, I suspect. The company’s COO, Jeff Williams, once told me that measuring blood sugar in a non-invasive way is very difficult to do, which I took to mean Apple at least considered it as something the company would like to achieve on that most intimate of devices, the Apple Watch.
Not just for diabetes—Tim Cook told me a few years ago he was wearing a glucose tracker and found the results informative. Until such time as the Watch can measure such things, though, this is an intriguing new development which pump users may welcome.

source