He I’m getting a 630g on Thursday. And will get to upgrade soon.
How do you go about getting an upgrade? Do you not have to have your pump 4 years before they replace/upgrade? I have the 630 at the moment, I think I have it about 6 months but would love to upgrade to 670 when it’s available. I should say I live in ireland so probably things are worked out differently, if so please excuse the stupid question!
They tell me it’s an $800 upgrade you get $500 credit by returning your old pump and there’s ways to pay off the other $300 by doing surveys videos and some other stuff how do you like your pump so far
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Did you get your pump directly from Medtronic or is there a distributor for Ireland and Europe? Sometimes these marketing programs do not extend world-wide. I would be curious to know about your possible upgrade path.
The way it works in ireland is that the hse which is the national health service order a pump on the patients behalf direct from medtronic. The hse pay for the pump and all medical supplies under a scheme called the long term illness scheme, which you are automatically entitled to if you are diagnosed with diabetes and it’s not means tested. A medtronic rep meets with you in your clinic and educates you on how to use it with your health care provider. You then are advised to put pump on your house insurance in case of accidental damage or loss. Outside of that medtronic replace it every 4 years with I believe their latest model as I was upgraded to 630 at my last pump changeover.
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670G is not yet available to customers.
Those of us in the Priority Access program (more here: Medtronic: Diabetes Products And Therapy Options; not sure if this applies outside of the US) will be the first to get it before it becomes more widely available to any customer. The fact that they extended the deadline for this arrangement to April 28 makes me think that getting the 670G will happen NO EARLIER than May 2017.
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Just checked with medtronic and it’s not even fda approved in Europe yet so I’ll have to wait and hear how you get on with it across the big pond!
Medtronic (and Animas for that matter), have offices in several European countries (including the UK and Ireland). In the UK, pumps are funded by the NHS and would in general be replaced after 4 years (in some areas they try to drag it out a bit as a money saving exercise). There are NO upgrade programmes.
My Vibe will be 4 years old in November 2017. I have the option to get another Vibe, change to a Vibe Plus or switch to a Medtronic 640G. If the 670G is out by then, I might be able to take that as my new pump. I am self funding CGM (and there is no prospect of NHS funding in the near future). The predictive low glucose suspend of the 640G is attractive but the sensors are less reliable and because of their shorter effective life work out more expensive. Switching to the Vibe Plus would cost me the equivalent of about US$700 more per year because of the shorter transmitter life.
The idea of the 670G with a genuine hybrid closed loop system is a very attractive option (even if the annual costs would be greater than for the Vibe/G4 combo). However, given the likely delays in the release of the 670G I would probably have to continue with my current pump into its 5th year and hope that it doesn’t break down. In three years of pumping with the Vibe, I am now on my 4th pump, so I am not overly confident about its reliability.
Joel
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The sensors can easily be reset, I get around 20 days if I wish out of a 640g sensor.
Effective calibration and an understanding of MARD are key to accuracy long term with the enlites.
I meant ISIG not MARD, but both are important ha 
http://sugabetic.me/the-isig-equation/
Much more eloquent than I could manage.
They have obviously improved them. I have a friend who uses the 640G and she was struggling to get 11-12 days. Still worth waiting for the 670G though.
Not saying its an easy feat like it is with the dexom. 
I still think the Dex is superior, but I appreciate the low glucose suspend and combined monitoring available in the 640g enough to allow for its shortcomings.
I can only get the ~20 days if I place the sensor on the back of the arm, double tape and calibrate when carefully considering ISIG value.
Very easy to trigger three “cannot calibrate” alarms if you ignore ISIG and then the sensor is done for.
That seems like an awful lot of faffing around, With me the Dexcom G4 is more or less bombproof. Spot on for up to 18 days (although sensors from the most recent batches seem to be dying around 12-14 days).
Am I right in thinking that Medtronic have a new sensor planned for the 670G?
I’m afraid I’m not 100% sure, there are murmurings of the 670G “Guardian 3” sensor being different from the enhanced elites available with the 640g and it having improved accuracy of 20% over the current iterations.
I’ll see what information I can get out of Medtronic.
I think in terms of evaluation of the systems, CGM wise Dexcom is king and will continue to be for the foreseeable, but despite initial concerns the 640g system overall was good enough to pull me away from a separate pump and CGM.
I’ll certainly be enquiring about the 670g.
Just spoke to UK Medtronic, we’re still awaiting FDA approval and will probably be looking at a late 2018/2019 release of the system.
A shame because that will fall in the middle of my pump renewal cycle!
I thought FDA was a US agency and therefore its approval is not legally required in Europe. However, I wouldn’t be surprise if some of the equivalent European agencies consider FDA approval as a strong sign that they can approve the same device with little effort to check if it works properly.
I thought the same on the call to Medtronic Robert.
The girl in product support did state that they had very little information on the pump in the UK and most of the information was coming from medtronic.com in the USA.
I don’t know how approves these devices in Europe, but she did confirm it might be 2019 until I could move on to it.
Hmmm
At the moment, approval for items of medical technology is via the EU (post-Brexit who knows). Items that meet the required Medical Device Directive will be awarded a CE mark.
It was my impression that approval of medical devices in Europe was much simpler and more straightforward than in the USA where the FDA are much more persnickety. New pump models seem to have been available in Europe sometimes years before release in the USA, so any delay to 2018/19 would be more likely due to marketing considerations by Medtronic than regulatory delays.
I have some good contacts with Medtronic reps in the UK. I will try to find out what is happening.
I do know that Animas will be releasing the Vibe Plus very soon (?May) but that plans for their hybrid closed loop system are still quite far in the future.
Yes–“Guardian 3” sensor. Transmitter includes a chip that monitors sensor function and will alert if it “thinks” there’s a problem with its own readings. They are pleased to say that the session period is now a full 7 days. During my hands-on session with the 630/670 I mentioned the roll-over trick with the G5 and the guy said these definitely would not allow that. Kinda makes sense that they’d force you to stick to the official spec since the thing is actually controlling insulin delivery.
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They are pushing the 630g as the new one here in Canada and that doesn’t come out till April or May of 2017
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