Hello community,
I am a nurse practitioner working with a low vision individual ,who is interested in making things work despite the challenge with an Omnipod device./G6 CGM. He was experienced with Paradym insulin pump but the pump is needing to be replaced. My question is: is it possible to prefill pods? He is able to magnify to view the screen but injection into the pod to fill is somewhat challenging. any help would be appreciated.
Sharon
Hi @Skettina
I appreciate your question.
I wish you could pre-fill pods, but unfortunately this is not possible from a practical standpoint because of the limit they have on it.
Once you fill a pod, you only have 2 hours to activate it. If you don’t activate it within 2 hours, it will no longer work.
So unless 2 hours is enough time, this probably is not a practical solution for him.
thanks for your “practical” response! I am amazed that there aren’t better resources for low vision patients as they are especially in need if tight control that AID’s can assist with. I have been doing some research and am coming up pretty short.
Sharon
Is it possible to fill the pod by “feel”? The pod fill port is always in the same place. The pod is always oriented in it’s package the same way.
When pods are doing an injection, they do an audible “click” for every 0.05 units. It is not very loud, but in a quiet room you can hear it and know how much you got.
I think the big challenge is the touchscreen screen.
Tandem also has a touchscreen, but they also have a quick-bolus button on the side which is a tangible button. So he could bolus using that.
There may be some Loop options that allow you to use audible alerts on your phone. But again, Loop is touchscreen which I think is always going to be the challenge.
Hi Sharon,
I’m legally blind and use the Tandem pump, which has the same issue of having to aim for a really tiny spot to fill the cartridge. Before going on the pump (which was my fourth), I reached out to Tandem to arrange to see the pump in person and try filling a cartridge to make sure I could do it. Tandem gave me a device that lines up the needle and cartridge. This device allows me to fill cartridges independently and although the rest of the pump is not accessible at all (fortunately I can see the screen with very strong magnification), I was impressed that Tandem gave me this little product.
Have you (or he) reached out to Omnipod to see if they have something similar? My feeling is that, in recent years, the pump companies have started to acknowledge that accessibility is a major issue and are slowly starting to try to make their products more accessible to disabled folks.
Jen:
Thanks for your email! It sounds like Tandem went the extra mile to arrange for help with the needle to port issue and I will use this tidbit for a patient when in need! My patient has invested in a magnifier at home and seems to have an app or camera magnification on his phone he is using when not at home. I have reached out to the Omnipod Rep about possible work around or additional technology for my patient but have yet to hear back from them. I also found out that for non IPhone users there is a Siri feature that is possible to use with G6 CGM. Other than that, I had not found alot of info on visual assistive devices to make insulin pumps work for patients.
Sharon
Omnipod had no solution for my difficulty filling Omnipod with tremor. But I have found I can do it using an insulin pen instead of the vial and syringe they insist on.
So I’m doubtful they would offer a solution for low vision.
My legal blindness is due to RP (retinitis pigmentosa). It was very slow progressing (diagnosed in 1983) and I still have some central vision, at least adequate to be able to refill my Tandem x2 pump for now. But considering that one of the side effects of long term diabetes is deteriorating vision and blindness, one would think that access with low vision would be one of the primary considerations for pump makers. However, it seems not to be. Touch screens are a problem even for those with adequate vision, especially for those with larger hands and thicker fingers. Don’t the manufacturers ever think of how their users access their products? Having dealt with projection screens and uses of colors on them, I know that red type on a black background is totally illegible. But that is the selection of colors by Tandem for their high and low BG numbers as well as for when the pump is running out of insulin. The brightest and most attention getting colors are white and yellow. And they use red!