"Professional CGM" Have you ever used it? How did that work out?

Continuing the discussion from Inserting Medtronic Enlite CGM in upper arm — How did that work for you?:

While I have bumped into the concept of a these one-shot, medical practice owned, CGMs before, I have never looked into them in any depth. In all honesty, I still have not done that. However, this is what I think I learned from Googling the phrase “Professional CGM”.

First off, I bumped into both the Dexcom & Medtronic sites where they are apparently trying to sell their professional CGM systems to doctors.

Dexcom G4 PLATINUM Professional CGM

What is Medtronic iPro®2 Professional CGM?

Both systems appear to essentially take a company’s individual CGM and then repurpose it as a device which (1) is used with multiple patients and (2) is sold to and owned by “healthcare professionals” i.e. a medical practice not an individual person.

Note: Apparently it is required to be tediously disinfected before it is used by a different patient. This is something which rather surprised me. Cleaning it, yes, I would expect that. But throwing away the inserter after only a single use ostensibly to prevent cross contamination? Nope, I did not see THAT one coming. (Frankly, it strikes me as just a rather crude way to make a few more bucks selling insertion devices. :flushed: )

Both systems expect the sensor/transmitter to be inserted at the doctor’s office. And both are intended to be used for only a short period of a few days and then returned “to the office for download”. For the Medtronic iPro2 this period is apparently from 3 to 5 days while for the Dexcom G4 PLATINUM it is “a period of 7 days”.

The big difference between the two devices is patient involvement. With the Medtronic iPro 2 all the patient gets is the sensor and an (apparently modified) transmitter. They do not get a monitor allowing them to see what is happening. The iPro 2 is described as a device for “blinded” or “masked” collection of glucose data. “Patients do not receive glucose alerts and only see the CGM data after it’s been analyzed by the healthcare professional.”

With the Dexcom PLATINUM the patient gets both a sensor/transmitter and a monitor. Dexcom’s description of this is “data is collected and shown to the patient, which aids in their understanding of the impact between behavior and glucose activity”.

Since I am curious about how this process works in the real world I decided to ask if anyone out there (besides @hljp :wink:) has ever used one of these devices? If so, what was the experience like? Did you get anything out of it? If so, what?

If you could also mention whether you get your care inside the U.S. or outside of it, that might also be a possibly interesting difference.

I’m in Canada and used the iPro system for a week back in early 2009. It was by far the most useful experience I have ever had with any endocrinologist or nurse, and it was extremely helpful. I met with a diabetes nurse educator who helped inser the iPro, which I wore for five or six days. She also gave me a record sheet where I recorded everything I ate and all exercise. (The experience would not have been half as useful had I not kept this record.) At the end of the trial, I had another appointment where I had the results downloaded, along with my meter, and we spent an hour or two going through each day along with my record sheets to determine what effects food and exercise and other factors had. Of course, it’s not comparable to wearing a CGM full-time (which I now do with a Dexcom G4), but at the time it gave me insights beyond anything I had ever experienced with a glucose meter.