Any Aussies here? Omnipod coming to you soon

The company expects to begin taking orders in Australia by the end of this month for its DASH system.

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Jim I understand that there may be a bit of an issue. Renza is usually a very good source for Australian diabetes news. I do not know a thing about it but it looks like there may be a bit of a hitch.

rick

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It is available to purchase here but no government subsidy or private insurance covers it because of the disposable model.
Pumps are covered under private insurance because they are classed by the government as ‘prostheses’ - and applying this to Omnipod would require some significant changes to health policy. As insurers make a loss on any policy purchasing an insulin pump, they won’t cover Omnipod unless forced to by government.
The other government subsidy on pump consumables only covers infusion sets and reservoirs and specifically excludes the pump itself. Omnipod may have some hope of getting partial cover here if they are able to attribute some of the pump cost to the reservoir and cannula. Their lobbying seems to have been unsuccessful so far, which probably explains why they have been pushing so hard on publicity on daytime TV etc describing Omni as a novel breakthrough device that can revolution is treatment - which we all know is garbage.

Personally much as I would like my son to be able to use an ultra-compact waterproof pump, the idea of it being disposable turns me right off. The waste from normal infusion sets is bad enough, adding e-waste to it is simply environmentally criminal.
It’s not going to be an easy issue to resolve.

I am waiting for tsport pump from Tandem. It’s a very small pump that attaches to you like a pod, but it has a normal infusion set. They keep,promising it but delays after delays.