Type 1 diabetic here, who uses an insulin pump and a CGM (continuous glucose monitor). I use an
Omnipod insulin pump and a
Dexcom G4 CGM.
I am also an electrical engineering major.
There is a lot of hype in the diabetes community about having a smartphone control devices such as a continuous glucose monitor and an insulin pump, using bluetooth 4.0 protocols, etc.
I have to say, it is rather insecure and unsafe.
While mobile healthcare is in our future, the only safe way for operating consumer healthcare devices (OTC and prescribed) is through some sort of mobile "healthcare operating system" and a specific device (which may look and feel like a "smartphone") to do only "healthcare operations"-that is approved by the FDA--NOT through a smartphone that can install various non-FDA approved apps, receives texts, phone calls, can send data through RF and various bluetooth protocols, and even send information via infrared .
There is also no efficient way of sorting through the data generated by the medical devices, such as mine, unless you carry a netbook with you at all times, carry the cords, and upload the devices all the time.
Also, you can forget about using the powerful information from the data generated from uploading (unless you can program in MatLab, C, Java, etc) from these devices unless they adopt the ISO/IEEE 11073 standard. I can say that dealing with the data exported from the proprietary diabetes-related programs is a nightmare to deal with. The programmers who code these programs all do a sub-par job, regardless of brand or manufacturer.
EDIT: I noticed the guy interviewed, Eric Topol, is a type 1 diabetic, using the Dexcom G5, which is under clinical trials. Basically that device uses the antenna in the transmitter (seen at 5:43) sending the data remotely via GSM (mobile/cellular network) to a server on the cloud. The Sony Ericsson phone can then access the server on the cloud, with the uploaded BG (blood glucose) data. The transmitter does not directly upload data to the phone (unlike what he said on the interview), bypassing a security flaw.
