I am curious what other members have experienced over the last 8 – 12 months as relates to pod failure rates. I have been using OmniPod for a year now and since May 2010, I have had failure a failure rate of 20 – 30 percent. This is not occlusions… my failures seem to occur after wearing the pod anywhere from 4 – 20 hours. I have only had one failure during the priming process. I move my pod location (arm, leg, stomach, etc…) each time I change (3 days if I am lucky) and also change the specific placement location when I go back to an area. I also keep my insulin at room temp. and store my pods in a different room from where I normally change them.
I am really frustrated with the loss of insulin, having to change a pod after only wearing it for a few hours, making calls to customer service, etc… I will say the representatives I speak with are excellent, they process the call and send out replacement pods ASAP, it’s just I feel the failure rate is unacceptable. When I inquire as to what the “alarm code” represents, I can not get a “real” answer; I’m a tech guy so I’m curious as to what is causing all my failures.
I do carry extra pods (2 -3), insulin, and a Humalog pen at all times so I am not worried about my numbers going high.
Just looking for insight, suggestions, etc… as I am seriously considering switching to a traditional pump.
I am not experiencing failure to that extent but maybe you should seriously consider dropping the omni system and going with mini-med or animus. My diabetes educator swears by the animus. Personally, I hate the tubing so I will stay with the omni and hope it gets better. I would guess my pod failure is less than 10%, Just had one fail tonite in the priming process but that is pretty rare for me. I would be very curious as to what the answer for the failure is. I enjoy troubleshooting and figuring out why something is not working. I’m sure one of the omni techies, not customer service, has a few ideas.
We have experienced this but only in the last 2 months. Before that we had almost no issues at all. This week I've called Insulet every day (including twice Christmas Eve and once on Christmas) One was an occlusion, but we've only ever had a couple of those. All the rest have been failures, and I've told Insulet that I can't wait for some competition because we are willing to try almost anything - my son is SO frustrated. The worst was having one fail minutes before he went on stage for his Christmas program and then as soon as he got home from it. I was just glad it didn't happen while he was on stage. He also had one at a sleepover while I was at work - he can't change his own pods, so the mother had to drive him halfway to me, and I met them in a parking lot to change his pod.
There is no way my son will ever do a traditional pump so we are stuck with what we have, but I am tired of calling them!!!!
Hello Natasha, I have started the Pod in October and only had one that didn't start up since then. However I have been on the traditional pumps for the past 16 years now and I do want to assure you that they are not that bad. I still have my Animas Ping and I will not get rid of it. The Pod has been great but there are only a few sites for me that I can wear them and I know that I will most likely go back and forth so that I can do other sites as well. Don't be afraid to try different things. Good luck.
Thanks Clubkobe for the info on Animus. I have started researching the different pumps “just in case” I get any more furstrated. I asked to speak to an engineer about this and was told they are not avaliable, so I guess I will continue to work with customer service. It would be nice to have a “cheat sheet” of all the alarm codes
Sorry to hear your son is having difficulties also, yes it is frustrating! With the cost of replacement insulin, lost time for changing posd, calling customer service, etc... I'm willing to try a traditional pump. Thanks for the support!
I've been on the OmniPod for 4 months; failure rate, that is,
(not including occlusions, pods knocked by accidental impact, coming off the adhesive base or the adhesive itself not holding up after immersion)
pods that are either
1) DOA (dead on arrival): No double-beep after filling, or a constant beep and failure to communicate with the PDM;
- or -
2) a "Pod Error" after the pod has been installed & started working correctly (it can happen just hours afterwards, or just before it was due ot expire -- no consistency)
is pretty consistently 2/month, or 10%. That's obviously a manufacturing or serious design defect, and personally I find it very high. It means you really need to carry 2 spare pods along if any significant distance from home.
Hang in there. Yes, it is frustrating and a pain in the .....
As for your pods squealing, I heard there a little hole where you could push a paper clip or pin into that will turn the sound off (by the battery on the rounded side). I only found out after I called customer service to report another failure and mentioned that I had to dismantle a pod because it would not stop beeping or communicate with the PDM.
Yea, I have had one or two DOA's, but that was back in March or April. In June I was at a conference and had 3 pods die in one day! Just love sitting in a big auditorium listening to a lecture then all the sudden your pod starts beeping, luckily it responded to the PDM and turned off and was not one of those that just beeps until you tear it apart and remove the batteries.
Yes, even a rate of 10% is too high! The reps I speak to always claim their failure rate is within FDA guidelines (not sure what the guidelines are myself), but I believe the rate should be more like 2 - 5 percent. I think that would be acceptable. Some questions I have due to this are:
1.Is there a quality issue because the manufacturing takes place in China and not in the U.S.A?
2.Is it a raw material quality issue?
3.Training with the production workers?
4.Is the technology ahead of it's time?
Yes, you have to carry extra pods / supplies at all times, especially if traveling away from home.
I've been on the Pod since September and have only had one pod fail and one occlusion. I guess I'm pretty fortunate to not be experiencing the failures that others have. The failure occured while I was taking my jacket off and I'm pretty sure that it was due to static electricity. It was kind of dry that morning and as soon as I slid my arm out of my jacket sleeve, bam!!! It started squealing, but it responded to the PDM which displayed an error code. I called customer service and they took all of the information and put it in my record and forwarded it to the engineering staff. I've had the PDM act up only once. I think it was due to the cheapo batteries that I was using at the time, but it's all been good since. I don't think that I'll ever go back to tubed pumping. This system can only get better as they make improvements based on our suggestions and complaints.
I’ve only had 3 “bad” pods since April 2010 so I’m pretty happy with that ratio. 2 failed within hours of putting them on, and one failed to prime properly.
I have been a pod user for over a year now, and over the past 4 months I have had only one fail, occulation error. Now back in the spring/summer, I had several fail, one during priming, and one that did not even beep, the others were the occuation error. The one that did not beep I was able to recover all of the insulin from, and for the one that failed during priming, I was able to recover some of the insulin.I have found that getting ride of all the bubbles in the insuln syringe that is provided reduced 90% of my pod failures in the begining I went through a really bad rash last year, but from my experience this years batchs have been pretty good. ONe trick for the pods that will not quit beeping, seend them to a cold frigdid death, the freezer, kills them in a few hours, and then send them to omni pod if need be in the recycling program. Best of luck in your struggles, All of us can feel your pain.
I have been wearing the Pod for 5 years now (one of the longest on TU, I believe) and I have only once experienced a failure rate as high as I have been lately. No explenation, and (although I agree the reps on the phone are always courteous and wish to help in any way) the phone reps reallly cant seem to offer any useful informaiton! I am having a failure rate of about 1 in 10, or one every box…the failed pods are not so frustrating as the lost insulin, although the reps are adament in the claim that it is “easy” to draw the insulin out of a failed pod…not so much for me, and I dont think it is a good idea anyway (My endo pressures me to drop the pod and switch to the Aramis, but I am dead set against any kinds of tubing).
Yea, I have tried to recover the insulin also. Up until the last few weeks I could recover 100 units when I had just filled with 175 a few hours prior to the failure, but the last few weeks I cannot recover anything? I don't know if they changed the design or?
Why are you so against tubing? I have never used a tubing as I was diagonosed in Sept 2009 and went on the pods in Dec of the same year.
We actually tried the Animas and the Omnipod on the same day at a conference, and discovered that my son (who has anxiety as well) can’t handle the insertion of a tubed pump, the presence of a tube, nor having anything on his abdomen. He will only wear the pod on his arms and although I know you can put a tubed pump on the arm, it’s not as easy. He’s also sure it would get ripped off since he’s a rough kid who is always rolling around on the floor with siblings and on the football field with his friends. He wore an Animas for 15 minutes and was practically hyperventilating the entire time. He declared he would never wear a pump at all after that. We just kind of got him into the Omnipod area and they distracted him while inserting a pod. The speed of it and the automatic-ness, and the arm placement sold him - but he won’t consider anything else. At his age we try to let him make as many decisions as possible since he already is angry about having the disease : (
I am so against tubing as I am very active, and as it is, I catch the pod on door jams all the time, and I can only imagine how often I would pull the tubing, I must admit, I have never been on a pump with tubing, but it is just an impression I have. That may be false and stupid of me, but it is just my problem....so I am not anxious to try the Anamis (which my endo is pushing, as I pointed out already). She (my endo) just has a very bad taste in her mouth about INsulet, and she feels the pod is just a "poor design" as it wastes so much insulin when these small problems arise. I agree, and she gets even more angry when she hears that company reps suggest that insulin be drawn out of a pod...as the insulin willl so obviously be "tainted".
Let me preface with the fact that I still love my POD despite some issues. I understand some will happen, so I’ve accepted that…I’ve only had one occlusion in 20 months, but have as of late had many pods fail a) when priming, and also a ton of them while unopened in packaging! I’ll all of the sudden hear the “beep of death” coming from somewhere, follow it and find a brand new, unopened POD that has just gone kaput! I have two theories: 1) something about the cold makes this happen–i feel I’ve had more failures in the winter. I mean, when my box arrives via Fedex it’s so cold it’s practially frozen, and 2) maybe it’s caused by too much movement? Now, could it be one, the other, or a combo of both, I’m unsure? As we all know, we need to keep extras around in case of a failure, so I keep a few in my purse. Does the fact that it’s not sitting completely still, in the box, on my bathroom shelf, and potentially moves around a bit in my purse have anything to do with this? I hope not, b/c frankly, I don’t have room in my purse for a whole box of them
Up until November of this year I had very rare failures. However, in the last two months I've had about 6 fail (i.e. 30% failure rate). Insulet has been good about replacing the pods but I can't help thinking that they've had some sort of quality control issues over the last period (something that seems to be confirmed by some of the posts here). Nonetheless I love the tubleless system and am not tempted to try anything else. I regard the pod failures as in effect the price of doing business although I continue to hope for greater reliability and the long-awaited smaller pod in due course. Good luck with your deliberations.
My son has been on the POD for 3 weeks. We’ve had 3 failures, insulet has replaced, a bit frustrating, but knew that we would have failures. Failure rate is high so I’m hoping our next box of 10 is better. Other than that our son loves it and hopefully we can deal with the failure rate.
I've been on the pod for 2 weeks now and had one fail last week after less than 24 hrs and my current one started making the same noises on day 2 and when I called customer service that said that this one would fail too. I went in to this knowing that technology is not perfect and that it would fail at some point but this is really unacceptable. I chose the pod as I seriously doubt that I could cope with the infusion set insertion unless it was a life or death thing plus I just don't see myself with tubing. We can just hope and pray that the design improves. It's too bad they don't have any direct competition. I'm betting things would improve faster. I, too, have been wondering if the cold has something to do with the failures. I was really excited to learn of the Solo and disappointed when it's debut was delayed. The Jewel looks interesting too.
