Unfortunetly Dexcom would never win the low price battle with Abbott.
As with most diabetes companies (or healthcare in general) they make enough off of people with insurance that they donât have to care if some people canât afford it.
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Dexcom was founded in 1999 and its first profit was reported in 4Q 2014. So 15 years of losses before they made a dime.
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I probably wonât switch if sensors canât be restarted. Many of my problems with sensor startups and failures at startup seem to be associated with too close contact with blood. I have to wonder if a 30 minute warmup sill cause as many problems as it solves.
the problem with restarting the G6 is that it is expecting a very large signal at the start because there is a lot of reagent on the sensor wire.
It wears off after about 2 hours.
When you restart it doesnât get that big surge at the beginning and often will need to be calibrated a few times before it is giving good data.
I know they have been trying to prevent us from restarting more and more with every new system, so you can be sure they will build that into this new sensor.
It will then take a little while until someone hacks it to extend the life, it is like a cat and mouse game.
my insurance pays for most of my cost, so I donât bother with the hassle of restarting.
I look forward to not needing to deal with transmitters on the G7.
I just hope it is accurate when it finally comes out.
Likely there will be a timer in the electronics that dies after 10 days.
I have been using the Dexcom 6!for several years now and love it. But I have never heard of âPre-soakingâ. What does that mean?
Also, has anyone heard about the combined pump/monitor that Omnipod and Dexcom are developing?
Many of us have found that inserting a new G6 sensor several hours or even a day before the current sensor session expires helps with the âfirst day jittersâ a newly started sensor often exhibits in its glucose trace.
That permits the new sensor time to acclimate to the new site before being called on to display glucose values. Since the sensor is placed into the interstitial fluid of a subcutaneous site, inserting earlier has come to be called âpre-soaking.â
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So youâre basically wearing two at a time?
Yes, You are wearing 2 sensors for a short period of time normally ranging between 6 hours and 24 hours. Different people have different improved experiences depending on the number of hours they pre-soak.
Yes, when presoaking, you are wearing two sensors for part of one day but only one of them is active. When I do this, I snap in an expired transmitter into the transmitter holder to protect the two sensor pads and the end of the sensor wire.
I find that a 12-20 hour presoak period works well but 5 or 6 hours works OK when my planning is poor.
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I have not bothered with the presoak thing. And find my G6 pretty accurate within the stated range. Knock on wood I have had 20 day runs consistently, with one restart and no attempts for a third.
A huge decision for me come January as my 5 year Medicare with the 630 pump ends then. So⌠I have to decide about the Tandem or stay w 630 and Dex. I want the hookup but even though Tandem owners say the pump change is easy to get used to it seems user unfriendly to me as I view it online.
I am not asking for input as I donât want to be viewed as changing the focus here. I will at least go with the G7 probably and appreciate hearing about those who will stock up by using up any G6s first. Not that I have more than a couple G6 extras!
Oh, I know what I actually meant to say. I have always used my arms for Dex as I use abdomen for pump. I plan to continue that. 10 days will still allow the other arm to heal but I try not to go in same place.
I know you didnât seek comment on this topic, but I donât mind thread detours as long as theyâre not extended.
I just want to point out that you have another option that many people donât realize. You could continue using your old 630 past the 5-year Medicare warranty and give yourself some more time to decide and also take advantage of any changes in the market. Has the 630 performed well for you?
More from Jake Leach, Dexcom Chief Technology Officer, interviewed by Scott Benner on the Jukebox Podcast, published 20 July 2021.
The answer to the big timeline question: soon. I know this is all relative. Soon for we users is something on the order of a few weeks to a few months but medical device manufacturers define it differently. Three weeks ago, Kevin Sayer, said the G7 will be available in 2022, now five months away.
Scott asked Jake about the pre-soaking tactic many of us now use on the G6. Jake answered, âwith G7, you can apply a sensor and itâs going to start its warm-up period the second you deploy it.â
I interpret that to mean that any pre-soak period will constitute an overlap with an existing sensor session and will adversely affect the economics. I sure hope that their change to a 30-minute warm-up will produce much better sensor performance right out of the blocks. I sure hope that this design decision, one that pre-empts a valuable work-around for many of us, does not materially impair first-day performance. We shall see.
Iâm hoping for the best and I will be able to monitor others G7 use for a few months while I use up my existing G6 supply. Their experience and comments will calibrate my expectations.
One thing that I have not seen or heard directly addressed by Dexcom principals is the application angle of the sensor. It looks like itâs at 90 degrees, a big change from the insertion angle used since way back, at least since the Seven Plus version in 2009.
Anyone else seen or heard anything different about the angle of the applied sensor wire? This could affect the comfort factor, especially for lean individuals, something I am not.
How do you remove the expired transmitter without first taking the new sensor off?
I use a thin guitar pick that I bought from Amazon.
People have also used tests strips or a thin plastic wallet ID card.
Check out this comment from another thread:
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Also check out @Timothyâs recent post:
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@Terry4 Just getting back in here. The 630 has performed well for me (knock on wood). I keep getting messages from Medtronic about chip in it or something but I have not had that problem. I just have an ambivalent wish to have the link between Dex and tslim. Ambivalent because I can change the 630 tubing etc in a couple minutes and am sure that wonât happen with the tslim and I dread a âbagâ of insulin vs a firm syringe. Bad design, in my view. Why can you never had a perfect design ; only tradeoffs?!
Tradeoffs are the reality of any designed product. Because we, as users, all have different preferences, a perfect design for one person is unlikely to satisfy everyone.
I find it oddly satisfying that the system I use performs well every metric I value, yet it uses a 12-year old Medtronic pump that continues to work, year after year. The brains of the system, an algorithm stored on my smart phone, can be routinely updated to take advantage of improved functions.
I guess my tradeoff is that my DIY Loop is not FDA-approved and when trouble strikes, the burden to fix it is on me. Many people shy away from that tradeoff but itâs been the best treatment situation in my 37 years of diabetes. It performs better with half the effort.
I understand your attraction of the t:slim pump paired with the Dexcom G6 sensor. If it werenât for the overly-cautious (for me!) guardrails, like the minimum glucose target of 112.5 mg/dL, I would have likely switched over just to offload my responsibility to keep my pump system performing correctly.
I do think, however, that more acceptable pump systems are not too far off. I am very interested in Tidepoolâs application with the FDA for Tidepool Loop software certification. If/when that happens, Iâm wondering what pumps will be compatible with it.
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I would be OK with the 112. So there is that difference between the two of us. I am old old and live alone. I really need the security of any tech help I can get to keep using the pump and the Dex as I age. That is I hope to age more! Independently as long as possible.
Thanks for your response. I enjoyed it.
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Then how on earth do you get the old transmitter out of the pre-soaking sensor when itâs time to replace it with the active transmitter?
I accidentally reinserted the old transmitter once when I was trying to replace both sensor and transmitter. I could not get the transmitter out so I had to remove the brand new sensor to get the transmitter out. Thus I had to scrap a brand new sensor. 
Iâve been reading this thread as Iâm interested both in this âpre-soakingâ especially since day one on a new sensor is always wacky, and in ârestarting sensors.â