CGM is BIG MONEY!!!
How Abbott plans to make its Freestyle Libre a $10B product by Elise Reuter for MedTechDive.com, 10 January 2023. CEO Robert Ford discussed plans to grow the market for Abbott’s continuous glucose monitors and its broader diabetes strategy.
Abbott Laboratories aims to grow its Freestyle Libre continuous glucose monitors into a $10 billion product over the next five years, CEO Robert Ford said on Tuesday at the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference.
Last year, the third iteration of the device was granted clearance by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, giving Abbott a head start as it gears up for competition from other CGM makers, including Dexcom. In December, Dexcom received FDA clearance for its G7 CGM, its first product that combines a sensor and transmitter into one disposable device.
“It’s our third generation, one-piece disposable sensor. Our competitor is on their first generation. And I think that we’ve got a lot of opportunity here for growth,” Ford said. “I’ve said this a couple of times, that I think Libre will be a $10 billion product in the next five years. And that obviously implies roughly a 15% annual growth rate,” he added.
Abbott has the highest CGM revenue of any device maker, with about 4.5 million users for its CGMs, bringing in about $1,000 each annually in revenue. In 2021, the company’s diabetes segment brought in $4.33 billion. Dexcom reported $2.45 billion in sales and Medtronic reported $2.34 billion in CGM sales in the 2022 fiscal year that ended in April.
Read more: How Abbott plans to make it’s Freestyle Libre a $10B product
Dexcom forecasts 2023 revenue to rise as much as 20% on G7 launch by Elise Reuters for MedTechDive.com, 9 January 2023.
Dexcom said it expects 2023 revenue to increase as much as 20%, helped by the launch of its G7 continuous glucose monitor early this year. Sales are forecast to reach $3.35 billion to $3.49 billion, Dexcom said on Monday in a report outlining preliminary earnings for 2022.
“We are excited to hit the ground running in 2023, building upon the CGM access expansion that we have driven over the past year to bring our leading sensor technology and a greater quality of care to many more people with diabetes around the world,” CEO Kevin Sayer said in the statement.
Read more: Dexcom forecasts 2023 revenue to rise as much as 20% on G7 launch
Oramed’s insulin pill fails PhIII trial in diabetes by Lei Lei Wu for Endpoints.com, 12 January 2023.
The biotech said its Phase III trial testing the oral insulin capsule ORMD-0801 failed to improve glycemic control compared to placebo. The trial didn’t meet its primary endpoint, which measured the mean change in A1C, a blood sugar level test, from baseline after half a year. The biotech’s stock $ORMP fell by over 70%, from $10.79 at Wednesday’s closing to less than $3 a share Thursday morning.
The Phase III trial also did not meet a secondary endpoint looking at a different blood sugar test — fasting plasma glucose — which measured the amount of glucose in the blood of participants who haven’t eaten for at least eight hours.
The biotech had been developing the pill as an easier way of delivering insulin, as opposed to through a needle or pump. Oramed says its capsule can protect the insulin from the harsh pH and enzymes of the gut and can help it get absorbed through the intestinal wall. Another biotech, i2o Therapeutics, which is partnered with J&J and Sanofi, is likewise working on an oral delivery method that can protect treatments from the caustic gut environment.
Read more: Oramed’s insulin pill fails PhIII trial in diabetes
How medical schools are missing the mark on artificial intelligence by Katie Palmer for StatNews.com, 12 January 2023.
Ready or not, health care is undergoing a massive transformation driven by artificial intelligence. But medical schools have barely started to teach about AI and machine learning — creating knowledge gaps that could compound the damage caused by flawed algorithms and biased decision-support systems.
“We’re going to be at a point where we’re not going to be able to catch up and be able to call out the technology defects or flaws,” said Erkin Ötleş, a machine learning researcher working toward his medical degree and Ph.D. at the University of Michigan. “Without being armed with that set of foundational knowledge into how these things work, we’re going to be at a disadvantage.”
In a recent commentary published in Cell Reports Medicine, Ötleş and a group of physicians and educators from the University of Michigan called for medical educators to make AI less of an afterthought and more of a core concept in undergraduate medical training. They emphasize the idea of a spiral curriculum, in which students learn key points about AI in medicine at the start, then turn back to it again and again as they learn more specialized skills.
But that won’t be easy to execute, said co-author and former Michigan medical school dean Jim Woolliscroft. Bureaucratic inertia keeps medical school curriculums from evolving quickly, and faculty themselves may not yet have the expertise to teach a new generation of doctors. In an interview with STAT, the student and the educator elaborated on how medical educators can kick-start the process of revamping AI training.
Read more: How medical schools are missing the mark on artificial intelligence
For those of you who are in the DIY looping community or just curious, here’s what happened this weekend:
“Finally! I’m happy to announce that the long-awaited (well, some people didn’t wait 
) Loop 3.0. It’s the product of a lot of work and love by many members of this community. Thanks to everyone for helping to make this option available, from developing and documenting to supporting, testing, and caring.5-minute walks every 30 minutes may help counter the effects of too much sitting by Anna Guildford for MedicalNewsToday.com, 12 January 2023.
The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates around 2 million deaths each year are linked to physical inactivity. The institution has described a sedentary lifestyle as being among the 10 leading causes of death and disability in the world. The number of people leading sedentary lifestyles is increasing due to a rise in occupational sedentary behaviors, such as office work, and increased use of electronic devices. An estimated 60–85% of people in the world and nearly two-thirds of children lead sedentary lifestyles.
A new study from Columbia University in New York suggests that regular bursts of short exercise “snacks” throughout the working day might be enough to counter the effects of a sedentary lifestyle. Specifically, the researchers found that a 5-minute walk every 30 minutes could offset the effects of prolonged sitting. The work was published on Jan. 12 in Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, the journal of the American College of Sports Medicine.
The researchers found that participants’ blood sugar and blood pressure levels were reduced after 5 minutes of walking for every 30 minutes of sitting.
Lead study author Keith Diaz, PhD, associate professor of behavioral medicine at Columbia, said “Just like we have recommendations on how many fruits and vegetables we should eat each day and how much we should exercise — this is the most exciting part of this work. We finally have an answer. There are so many adults who have a job or lifestyle where they have to sit for prolonged periods. We can now provide them with guidance on this one behavior change to reduce their health risks from sitting.”
“Muscles serve an important role in our health by helping to regulate blood sugar and cholesterol levels — but they need to be used and contracted to do this,” he said.
“When our muscles aren’t used after hours and hours of sitting, they don’t fully help out to regulate blood sugar and cholesterol levels. So we think that regular short walks or ‘activity snacks’ helps to activate the muscles to serve as better blood sugar and cholesterol regulators.”
Dr. Yu-Ming Ni, a noninvasive cardiologist at MemorialCare Heart and Vascular Institute at Orange Coast Medical Center, not involved in the study, explained that muscles are a significant consumer of blood sugar.
Read more: 5-minute walks every 30 minutes may help counter the effects of too much sitting
Children with type 1 diabetes miss more school days than children without diabetes by Erin T. Welsh for Healio.com/endocrinology, 9 January 2023.
Children with type 1 diabetes missed nine more school days, on average, per year than children without the disease, according to new research published in Diabetes Care.
“Children living with diabetes and managing the condition achieve the same grades at age 16 as their peers without diabetes — and are equally as likely to progress to higher education,” Robert French, PhD, senior research fellow in the division of infection and immunity in the Diabetes Research Group at the School of Medicine at Cardiff University, U.K., said in a related press release. “This is quite remarkable, given that they miss more school sessions than those without the condition.”
According to the researchers, these findings may have important implications for improving outcomes for children with type 1 diabetes, as healthcare professionals can reassure parents that diabetes diagnosis or duration should not affect learning, and that intensified glycemic management can help to improve educational outcomes for children with the least optimal HbA1c.
Read more: Children with type 1 diabetes miss more school days than children without diabetes
I will be surprised if Abbot can get to 10Billion unless medicare changes its rules for T2’s. I am not certain that will happen anytime soon. I will say they are positioned correctly I think they are discounting the that if they get T2 approval from medicare, so will Dexcom and MedT.
Abbott’s Libre sensor is already significantly bigger than is Dexcom, and by a substantial margin. Part of its strategy is to sell at prices which are about 30% lower than Dexcom’s sensors retail for, combined with a longer wear-time (14 days vs. 10 days for Dexcom sensors). I think both Abbott and Dexcom are lusting over the prospects of converting T2’s to CGM’s, but payers are balking over the price tag. Right now, thanks for formulary exclusions, Dexcom is covered by each of the three largest insurers, while Libre is not covered by United Healthcare’s PBM OptumRx or CVS Health/Aetna/Caremark. Oddly, Cigna’s Express Scripts does not “prefer” one CGM brand over another, enabling patients and their doctors to choose. Part of the reason is because CGM’s aren’t heavily-rebated as drugs are, such as insulin (the poster child for runaway list price inflation due to rebates paid to PBM’s). See more about formulary exclusions at https://www.drugchannels.net/2023/01/the-big-three-pbms-2023-formulary.html
Thanks Scott … very interesting. There’s another battle brewing for coverage of Omnipod Dash pods. Some folks can only get Omnipod Eros pods (also known as Classic), which will be discontinued 12/31/23, announced by Insulet to HCPs. The formularies are crazy and illogical … and hurt people!