Does anybody have reference to where Abbott threatened to sue the diabetic patient community in response to Loop? It would have been in response to hacking Libre.
I can’t find reference to it anywhere and they tend to pull that stuff down.
I want to reference it in my DOJ complaint.
I guess what is wrong with their position? How do they know, or do you know, if hacking the Libre sensors will not affect the sensor reporting or error rate? While I am supportive of the right to repair community, I would be hesitant to support this sort of thing with a medical device, which can be a life-or-death situation.
Without the citation, I won’t use the argument. They dropped that case.
The point was that patients take personal risk in order to spark technical innovations that we would traditionally assign as a commercial/market responsibilities. The result of market capture is that companies don’t have incentive to innovate. That’s why patients do the R&D, testing, development, etc. I think they dropped the case because it’s complicated to sue customers who are performing all your R&D, testing, development for free. That’s a highly unusual situation.
Maybe I can substitute the fact that the EMR’s just incorporated an intention to incorporate Libre data last week. That took a LONG time. Maybe I can still include both examples, but this thing is getting long.
I guess I disagree with your position. The T1D community does very little R&D compared to Abbott Laboratories, Dexcom, Medtronic, and other CGMS companies. R&D by these companies is done in strictly controlled environments with backup systems and probably non-diabetics as test subjects to ensure the new technology works correctly before integrating it into insulin pumps and other devices.
Hacking can also leak their IP, which is worth a lot of money, considering they developed the sensors and have billions of dollars/euros on the line. As a 40+ year T1D who has had more hospitalizations over the years than can be counted, someone, or a group of people, who think they can do a better job than people can.
Abbott spent $2.741 billion on R&D in 2023 and $8.371 billion over 2021-2023 according to their annual report, Page 39 of the PDF. While this number is for the whole of Abbott Laboratories, it still shows what they are doing. And these are just Abbott.
Meanwhile, Dexcom is spending about $0.5 billion per year on R&D. Since they are only developing CGMS, this is a more accurate budget for pure diabetes research. If you extrapolate a similar outlay by Abbott to the Libre, that is a combined annual outlay of around $1 billion for CGMS R&D by two companies on sensor research.
There is a difference between the right to repair and dealing with a medical device. A medical device can be the difference between life and death. Going after the company’s IP is no different from trying to hack your iPhone; Apple will come for you. Abbott should defend their IP no differently.
Diabetics built the only major advancement in insulin pumps systems in the United States in the past 10 years - Artificial Pancreas Systems. Any one of the commercial companies listed could have done that. But they didn’t. They didn’t have incentive to do it. Patients did. They did all the R&D, testing, and development. People in this community did that. People in this community also helped establish and advance the paradigms for those algorithms. FDA granted us permission because the medical device companies had so clearly fallen flat. That is a highly unusual set of circumstances. Its an unfortunate consequence of monopolization in healthcare.
Abbott was the last hardware to be hacked because no one wanted it. It’s the crappiest hardware. Medtronic sensors, as we all know, are not much better. Dexcom was the quality. They developed the technology.
“Would”; you have some background information? Please post.
I dunno if I do, actually. I just assume everybody remembers. Let me try…somebody else might have to summarize. I don’t think I’ll do a good job.
A long time ago, there was company that decided that all the medical data (blood glucose readings) that I collected using my blood, sweat, and tears 
…and a LOT of money, belonged to me. They did that, in part, to spur innovation by our community. They were hardware engineers. They didn’t assume that they could predict where, when, or how technology advanced. They made that data we collected open source (similar to what the creators of insulin did in the 1920’s) to allow the largest number of people an opportunity to contribute to the widest variety of creative endeavors/solutions built atop that data. They built an ecosystem for innovation.
Software people do this all the time, but it’s very unusual for hardware engineers. It’s unusual for the medical device industry, which is mostly hardware guys. Hardware (older) has a different culture than software (newer).
The first thing everyone wants to do is analyze the data, and the community builds all sorts of tools for that. The second thing that everyone wanted was to integrate insulin pumps and CGMs. People start doing that pretty fast. You see Dana Lewis pop up. The FDA is sending people to her conferences to talk to her and she is scared. But she’s innovating anyway because she’s afraid that she will die without innovation. Dana Lewis was unusually afraid of low blood sugar because she was an ultra heavy sleeper who just couldn’t wake up. Medtronic might have been the only insulin pump widely used in the American market back then (I can’t recall). MT had the vast majority of market share.
So, people start hacking medtronic pumps. You can watch Radcliff talk about the details of that at one of the largest software conferences in the nation by 2011. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-q29b3wvbss But what is important to mention here is that “hacking” is really a strong term for what they are doing because those MT pumps didn’t have any encryption. They are “hacking” pieces of equipment together, not doing anything illegal because medical device companies were primarily hardware engineers and they didn’t even think about encrypting their software back then. That was considered irresponsible, but was not uncommon back then. Medical devices were, for a long time (and still to this day) very behind on the software side. As an industry, they were particularly vulnerable.
Back then, nobody really cared about Libre because if people were going to go to all the personal effort to hack devices and write software, they wanted the quality hardware and they wanted the hardware that was most widely used by patients. MT pumps were widely used and easy to get inside, so they were owned first by diabetics. MT pumps were stitched together with Dexcom CGMs because Dexcom gave everyone access to the data.
The timeline looked something like this:
The Canadians are doing some predictive algorithms via t:slim early on in the commercial space. That’s rolling by 2018. NightScout is one of the first opensource projects that exists in the US that is built on “hacked” diabetic medical devices. The motivation for that project was that parents of young diabetic children were scared shitless and wanted to be able to see the kids Dexcom data while they were at work.
Time passed. Where things got held up was that the “good” hardware, like Omnipod (which tons of people wanted), also had good software encryption. No one cared about Libre or MT sensors. They wanted Omnipod pumps. Diabetics offered a bug bounty of $45,000 (I think) to own Omnipod (break the encryption)…I would need to double check… Meanwhile, MT is loosing market share to Omnipod. UHG and MT are colluding to make it so that diabetics can ONLY use MT pumps.
I think they get into the Omnipod around 2018. At that point we own every device. I don’t recall WHEN they took Libre and MT sensors because I didn’t care. It wasn’t worth mentioning. Those devices were simply not of interest because they were inferior hardware. The only reason I remember anything about it was because Abbott threatened lawsuit.
It wasn’t much of a threat because no one cared about their tech, they just hacked it because it was easy and they might as well have everything. They hacked it and threw it into the pile of devices that T1’s don’t really use much.
I actually was employed by Abbott. I chose them because they don’t build anything of value, so I didn’t feel like I was contributing to medical monopolization in Minneapolis. I couldn’t tolerate the idea of working with UHG or MT. I’m neutral about Boston Sci because they don’t build diabetes tech, so there aren’t years of hard feelings that have built up during these fights.
Gosh darn it, you all. I really need a reference for when Abbott tried to sue the 'betics. It ties so nicely into this recent event.
Unrelated but I read this and thought you’d like it:
I actually saw that article today and I sent it to a friend of mine, but I haven’t read it yet. I will. THANK YOU SO MUCH for the link. I’m struggling to write this thing. I’ve locked myself in a room and am taking no phone calls until it’s done.
I’m trying to explain, in writing, the problem of monopolization - that the problem isn’t JUST the money. The larger problem is that it’s all easy money. The problem with easy money is that nobody does any actual work. All this work that a failed industry gets paid to NOT do, gets done by patients. It’s 2025 and Abbott and Epic want some kinda pat on the head for incorporating blood sugar data into their computer system. I’ve been collecting data via a sensor for ten or twenty years. If you can’t pull data into an EMR, how have doctors been getting data in order to make treatment decisions? They aren’t, they don’t, and they can’t. Patients do all that and they bill us for services that they don’t provide. It’s all a giant scam. Meanwhile, they like to tell EVERYONE for years that diabetes is bankrupting the American healthcare system. They are all liars and they all benefit from the lies. Meanwhile, diabetic patients have long since given up on them and built all our medical devices to work together in one giant system and Abbott threatened to sue diabetics for that. You can’t make this stuff up.
Abbott integrates Libre CGM data into Epic EHR workflows
Oooooh, that might be it! I can use that! Thank you. Thank you. Thank you!!!
Thanks for some of the references. I don’t want to be a contrarian, but your support of the community doesn’t align with what the companies have done in the past. Your trashing of CGM manufacturers seems a little misguided, as the newest Abbott sensors are almost on par with Dexcomm’s sensors. Medtronic has done a lot of R&D on their sensor, and their newest, just approved by the FDA sensor is also on par with the Dex. Abbott has also been at the forefront of vendor interoperability by partnering with numerous pump companies to have their sensors work with the pump companies’ devices.
Maybe I shouldn’t trust https://diabetesjournals.org/ as they state that APS systems were first researched in 1964, over 50 years ago, and MiniMed/Metronic began its development in 1999, over 25 years ago! This was written in 2011, almost 15 years ago. They have a complete history in the article with 125 citations. It is a LONG article and is well worth the read.
I am not saying someone’s independent project in their garage is inherently bad and dangerous. I am just noting that sensor companies have the right to defend their patented IP. Anyone who has ever held a patent or copyright has that right and should defend their patented item or copyrighted items. Should a company not defend its patent or Disney not defend their copyright on characters?
There is a difference between copying some patent and using a product differently than it was intended.
Of course companies need to protect their interests.
However if I want to use my glucose data to feed loop and dose insulin, the sensor manufacturer doesn’t lose revenue.
They should not care, but they do.
Pump manufacturers could see a loss if we are not buying their pumps and algorithms.
We should be aware of the risks we take doing things like this, but if we are well informed and sign off our rights to sue because we are doing something risky,
We should be allowed to use it the way we want to.
As a manufacturer, I don’t agree because it is only a matter of time before an incident happens, and the individual who modified the use of the product finds a creative law firm that sues in hopes of getting a settlement, regardless of any hold harmless agreements or waivers. Win, draw, or lose, these suits cost manufacturers a lot of time, effort, and money, which are passed on to the existing customers.
We can talk about what I wrote and if you think its way off base. We have been discussing these issues in the forum for 15 years. Discussion have moved off the forum because I don’t perceive this as a real topic of interest (to everyone) in the same way that it used to be. No biggie, but I’m still drafting my public comment. P.S. Anyone is allowed to submit public comment. The DOJ is keen to receive public comment from patients on the topic of antitrust in healthcare. Here’s a snippet.
[21] “Diabetes Technology Society,” www.diabetestechnology.org, Jun. 23, 2017. Diabetes Technology Society
[22] I. Hirsch, “Introduction: History of Glucose Monitoring,” Role of Continuous Glucose Monitoring in Diabetes Treatment, vol. 2018, no. 1, pp. 1–1, Jun. 2018, doi: https://doi.org/10.2337/db20181-1.
P.S. There’s not a lot of internet conversation taking place right now on the topic of antitrust. The internet went speechless after the executive order yesterday. I don’t think that anybody knows what to think. That crowd is usually pretty chatty.
Back to chatty!@!
It is too bad that legitimate reasons brought up by users on the forum disagree with your position and cause you to shut down the topics public forum. Like CJ114 pointed out, the companies are looking out for frivolous lawsuits. While Timothy is trying to say sign over your rights to sue, there is no process to legally sign those rights to sue. Look at coffee and the cups, you get the statement “Warning contents may be hot”. While it is assumed that you know that the coffee you bought is hot, people win a suit based on “not being informed”.
IP and copyright are there for a reason, and these companies or individuals have these rights codified for such reasons. If you create an animated film with Arial and Eric doing what some may call inappropriate adult activities, would Disney not sue you, even though the community may say it is for the betterment of the community?
This is a little off topic. I understand that you are trying to push something, but I don’t know what it is so I can’t really participate in the convo. You have plenty of people who want to talk to you about IP rights, if that’s your interest. Talk to them. I’ve given you an opportunity to respond to what I’m submitting, if you want. If you don’t want, that’s fine too. I changed the title of the post so it’s more clear to readers.
I’m writing about the impact of monopolization on the healthcare industry because that is the information requested by Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission, both of which have active cases. If you are interested in that topic, there was a big Executive Order yesterday. The Feds have some crazy new idea about how to deal w/ it. The CEO of UHG resigned today. There’s a lot going on.
If you take issue with this citation, you are welcome to post your concerns.
I try to explain WHY work like that was done. Maybe that’s useful to the current forum community who may or may not have been around during those years.
I included a table of those old projects. Its in the context of EPIC and this years announcement that they will incorporate CGM data from Abbott. I think that’s important because it shows how far behind (ten years) industry is and how far behind we all would be if we relied on commercial markets.
