Remoting into Android to Control Omnipod 5?

Type 1 and LADA
1

Does anyone know whether it is possible to remote into an Android phone which is running Omnipod-5 and dispense boluses that way?

My very elderly Type-1 mother would benefit very much from an adult day program, and it would free my sister and me from having to provide round-the-clock supervision (which prevents me from working). But Mom is no longer able to manage Omnipod (hasn’t been for several years!), and the day program includes lunch.

I know that Omnipod security tries to prevent doing this, but is there any way around it? It would be such a life saver for all of us!

2

It is not currently possible to do this with the Omnipod 5, but it is possible to do it another way.

The way to do this is to switch to the Omnipod Dash pods, and build the Loop app yourself. There is a recent version of Loop that allows remote bolusing.

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3

Thanks, Eric. Unfortunately, we are not able to use Dash, because it requires iPhone.s We had to wait until Omnipod-5 came out.

Have you ever used AirDroid or some such similar software to remotely control the phone? Different Omnipod reps tell me different things as to whether this is possible.

4

Dash pods can also be looped with Android, as far as I know.

I have not used Android, but I have heard others who have.

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5

Thanks, Eric. I am going to try remoting in with an app called Team Viewer, and will report how it went.

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6

Hi CaregiverDaughter. I’m Chris your friendly IT Information Security guy. Please do not do this. Tell us about the problems you having taking care of your elderly parents and we will help you think of ways to manage Diabetes in your situation.

7

@Eric2 was right. Omnipod does not officially support this feature, but it can be done with Android ruining AndroidAPS and using Dash pods. You will also need to setup a Nightscout website, which will put all her CGM and pump info into the cloud, so it can be accessed and controlled remotely. There are a lot of caregivers that do this!

There’s are paid services that will run the Nightscout website for you, or you can follow setup instructions to build it yourself.

It can seem daunting at first, but you don’t need any programming experience to set it up. The process is documented very well. If you can follow instructions, you can build the app. And once you get AndroidAPS installed, features are unlocked slowly, giving you time to learn and adjust to the system. Once you’re up and running, you’ll be able to initiate boluses, change basal rates, safe view get status from the secure Nightscout website. You can even do it via text messages.

https://androidaps.readthedocs.io/en/latest/

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8

Would Team Viewer not work, then?

9

It wouldn’t be daunting to me at all, but wouldn’t remoting into the phone be orders of magnitude easier? Or has Omnipod in fact blocked that off, then? (I can never get a straight answer from them.)

10

Also, we would have to switch my mother to an iPhone, which nobody wants to do.

11

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12

Well, I guess I’ll see what happens when I try it! My expectation is that either I’ll be able to use my mother’s Omnipod app from my phone pretty much as easily and simply as I would from my mother’s, or it won’t work at all because Omnipod security blocks it.

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13

No. Using Loop with Dash pods is possible with Android. You don’t need an iPhone.

15

People have provided you with a solution that enables you to work your job. That’s a big deal. You can disregard their advice, but they know quite a lot about what they are saying and you will go down a dead end trying to find a ‘better way.’ You are not installing candy crush, you are delivering critical life and death medications. You are NOT allowed to do this legally, so you NEED to take it seriously or people put themselves at risk by helping you.

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16

Being able to remotely bolus from a distant phone would be a serious security issue and endanger your mother’s life. Complications from high glucose aren’t nearly as dangerous as hypoglycemia without a trained caregiver present.

If the day care is capable of supervision of the very elderly, then they should be capable and trustworthy of providing a low carbohydrate lunch, or serving one that you prepare and send with her. Either way, you can’t tell what she eats without watching her.

Hypo in the very elderly is very dangerous and counter-injections with glucagon are problematic in persons in frail health with fragile skin. Trained caregivers who are present to provide care for elderly persons with type 1 don’t bolus for food that hasn’t been observed to be eaten and they micro-bolus (multiple partial boluses) afterward.

17

Unfortunately, adult day care is not a nursing home. They do not provide low-carb food and certainly don’t do boluses. (And we have asked about both things.)

Your expectations may be unrealistic. In any case, they suggest that my sister and I should continue to be available in person round-the-clock to administer boluses. This is what we’re doing, but it’s been years now, and it’s hard.

I hope to be able to try remoting into the Android when I see my mother next week; my last visit had to be postponed. Whatever the solution turns out to be (if indeed there is one), it has to be something my non-technical sister can also manage.

18

I know that adult day care is not a “nursing home”.

That’s an obsolete concept replaced by assisted living, skilled nursing and hospice facilities, all of which can provide appropriate staff to perform continued medical assistance like meal bolusing and medical administration per directions. My mother and we had years of experience with all of them, and with adult day care for her husband who had dementia but was otherwise healthy, before they died at ages 97 and 98.

Adult day care not offered as service from a healthcare facility - with escalated services available on demand - is like kindergarten for seniors, directed busywork without the services provided by babysitters. They are fine for healthy seniors with diminished physical and/or cognitive ability to give them something to do in a social environment, but not for medically fragile “veru elderly” seniors.

If she were my mother I wouldn’t trust her care to an adult day care center, trust the food they prepared to be appropriate or trust that she would eat it.

I described what a properly trained and trustworthy caregiver would do to make it absolutely clear that adult day care is NOT trustworthy to prepare meals for your mother or to deal with the consequences of an accidental insulin overdose…

Unfortunately, you have come here with a fixed idea about what you want to do and are unwiliing to be open to suggestions from people who have first hand knowledge and experience. Anyone who has lived with having T1D themself and giving themself insulin is an expert compared to someone who doesn’t and hasn’t.

I’ve done it for +45 year and am well aware of my limitations. I’m here to learn about coping with things that I am experiencing for the first time.

While you have good intentions what you want to do is dangerous and irresponsible.

So I suggested what basic adult day care and you most certainly ought to be able to do - serve a very low carb meal THAT YOU PREPARED and sent with her to eat and nothing else by mouth, just as if she had a severe food allergy. Whether she ate that or nor she wouldn’t need a lunch bolus

While your mother needs insulin, bolusing for a scheduled but uncontrolled meals using a “dumb” patch pump might not be the most appropriate therapy for her. A hybrid closed loop pump could provide options better suited to her situation.

For example, the 3 hour net effect of a partial bolus can be mimicked with less risk using a modest basal profile “hump” as a partial bolus. Corrections could be done later when you are available. A CGM can be configured to alert you automatically if her glucose was rising enough and fast enough to be a concern
…

I have T1D am 75 and I AM still capable of bolusing for meals. ( no hypo, TIR +95%, A1C 5.0. ) I wouldn’t trust the content or portion sizes of what a day care group would serve. I don’t trust restaurants when I order items from their standard menus. I have to partial bolus before and correct after any meal prepared by a cook who doesn’t understand my needs (anyone but me or my wife) based on my glucose response. That’s 3x the work for a less satisfactory response than for a meal I can trust for content.

FYI: Th FDA approval process for insulin pumps requires that remote bolus is limited to very short distances like Bluetooth, limd to devices from makers who can be trusted to actively work to keep those devices OSs secure, and further limited to those phone models that have been tested by the pump maker.

Technically it’s likely possible to hack a phone to permit remotely overriding security and control another program. But if a hacker were to circumvent those protections, it would be a violation of the DCMA - a federal felony. If that software was then knowingly installed and used to dose someone who died of an overdose, whether the overdose was a mistake or intentional, it would be irrelevant. In most of the US, if a death occurs during the commission of a felony that is directly related to the action of the felony, it’s murder.

19

Thank you for your input.

20

I’m gonna suggest it again… please look into running AndroidAPS with Omnipod Dash pods. It was created for people just like you, who are tired of waiting for commercial systems to meet their needs.

I don’t know about remoting into the phone, but to my knowledge, nobody is doing it that way. There is definitely some major risks associated with it. AAPS was written specifically for these tasks with safety features baked in purposely.

It’s a little bit of work to set up, but once you’re rolling, it is EVERYTHING you want and need. I promise, while it seems overwhelming at first, it really isn’t. They walk you through everything one step at a time and he’s everything up into small, digestible pieces. But with it, you’ll be able to see and control everything remotely, and you’ll be able to set up what’s called “unannounced meals”, UAM for short, which removes the need to bolus entirely. It’s not quite as good as pre-bolusing appropriately, but shockingly effective nonetheless.

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21

I agree with robyn h’s aaps recommendations, but wanted to add the micro bolusing and unannounced meals will only occur during closed looping, meaning after all the objectives are completed, so i would plan on setting up the app before you visit, then go through the objectives during a long visit… some take a while. all the remotely accessible data is through nightscout, so its a good idea to have that set up before building the app…with nightscout, you could see her glucose using any computer, leave it running in the background, set high and low alerts, and call the facilities if necessary. sometimes 200 units might not last 3 days, but you can use u200

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