I expect you have heard the warning for social media (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, et alia) to not make the mistake of assuming you are the customer. The users are not the customers. Rather, information about the users is the product Facebook sells to advertisers, one of its true customers.
I feel the same thing is true in the medical device industry. Don’t make the mistake of assuming you are a customer just because you use the products Abbot, Dexcom, Medtronic, Omnipod or Tandem sell. You are not. You’re part of a solution product which they sell to their true customers, the medical community with whom diabetics work.
After all, who ultimately controls whether or not you can access any of their products? They all require a doctor’s approval to use them, don’t they? Also, who has the most influence over which product a diabetic uses to manage their chronic illness?
So who’s opinion is the medical device industry most likely to focus on when they build a device?
You make an important distinction here, one I’ve taken to heart in the last few years.
As far as the doctors being the principal target for med tech companies, I agree with that as well. It’s one of the contrasting aspects of the We Are Not Waiting patient movement that appeals to me.
The implied message of this patient-led movement is that doctors and their med-tech corporate partners are not necessary for every last patient. We do need their products but that hardware can be configured and used on our terms, not theirs.
Patients embody a unique perspective and understand the “missing ingredient” in industry efforts. Well-funded industry user-studies often drop the ball when trying to fully incorporate our point of view.
We are a small minority of the market yet I think we’ve had some material effect on these other players.
“If you’re playing a poker game and you look around the table and and can’t tell who the sucker is, it’s you.” (Paul Newman, though I don’t think he originated it)
This is a very interesting discussion. And I had never really thought about, that it’s really marketed to the medical professionals. Now we as consumers bug the medical professionals for products so we do have a say. But I have a feeling the more avid controllers are a lot smaller percentage.
But it seems really true that the people it’s geared towards are medical professionals and usually those medical professionals do not have type 1 diabetes. And those medical professionals don’t want to see hypos and they want a certain level of care to stop complications as they see it. And the medical professionals are where most diabetics learn about pumps, cgm’s etc.
My knowledge greatly increased with the endo who properly diagnosed me as she was a type 1 and really into all the newest tech. I also saw her NP sometimes who was also a type 1. I remember she had a container full of pumps, cgm’s etc that she brought in and I settled first on trying a Libre. When I first thought about a pump she sent me home with some infusion sets to try. They always had different insulins in the office so you could try a different one. And she was always testing equipment for manufacturers and made sure everyone new there was a latest and greatest.
But she was a type 1, and while I love my endo now, there is a big difference. Just like when we talk to people, only another type 1 really understands so much.
But also when I was first diagnosed I started searching for answers. That’s when I started running across ways different people used to control numbers and that people aimed for lower numbers and more control. People don’t know to ask what they don’t know to ask.
Interesting thoughts. Medtronics seems to be all about marketing and pump/CGM integration. But diabetes care professionals mostly seem to prefer Dexcom for CGM. Perhaps the diabetes care folks I’ve worked with aren’t representative.
