Animas or Minimed

I am up for a new pump. I have been going back and forth for months between the Ping and the minimed.

I currently have a minimed. I have no problems with this pump. The only reason I am considering switching is because the Ping and Dexacom should be communicating soon. I am not a big fan of the Minimed CGM. However, I don’t know if I can give up the ESC button and the fact that I use more than 200 units every three days.

Anyone have any thoughts about the two?

Thanks!

Hi MoeAx: I have never had a Medtronic/Minimed pump–I started with Disetronic (back then Disetronic engineering was considered far superior to Minimed) and now I have the Animas 2020, which I love. But I have used the Medtronic Guardian CGM (terrible experience) and I now have the Dexcom, which is amazingly good, accurate, easy to calibrate, etc. There is no comparison between the Medtronic CGM and the Dexcom. So yes, right now I wear two devices, but the Animas Vibe (the combo Animas pump/Dexcom CGM) is available in Europe and I hope will be available in the U.S. in not too much time. So I vote Animas, just my opinion.

Depends if you want to hold out until the new Animas hits the states (if you are in the states) or if you want separate devices.
I may be getting a new pump fairly soon, and wouldnt mind investigating MM once again (started with one in 10/2000) but really they havent had any real big advances in features.

If your main concern is with Dexcom integration then the Animas is the way to go. Otherwise unless you like the glucometer integration with the Ping I really do not see the difference between Medtronic and Animas.

MM probably has a better belt clip!

I’ve been really happy with my MM pump (revel). If you use that much insulin, I would probably suggest going with the MM pump because I think they have the larger resevoir (right?). The screen on the ping does look nice, and I am a little jealous of that, but the MM pump seems a bit more compact to me (just my feeling having held both the ping and the MM) and easy to hide under clothing.

As for the CGM - I don’t currently use a CGM, but my endo is not a fan of the MM CGM. I had tried it before and didn’t really care for it because it was so freaking hard to insert and not terribly accurate. But I also had accuracy issues with the Dexcom when I tried it, so maybe it’s just me. My endo said that, in her experience, the Dexcom is far more reliable and accurate and that is the CGM she recommends.

That said, I may give the MM CGM a try again this fall, at least on a periodic basis so I can get some more consistent baseline data. Isn’t MM supposed to be getting some better sensors or something?

I know the sensor needle is suppose to get smaller but I have not heard much about the change in accuracy. Anyone with more details.