← Diabetes Connections | Type 1 Diabetes
Diabetes Connections | Type 1 Diabetes
Fixing the Most Overlooked Problem in Diabetes: Your Skin
00:42:06
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Support for this episode comes from Omnipod.
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Did you hear the pod drop?
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Did you know all the sounds used to make that song come from a site change with the Omnipod 5 automated insulin delivery system. Pretty cool, huh? With Omnipod 5 pump, site changes are simple. The pod lasts up to 3 days, 72 hours, and to change it, you just fill up the pod with insulin, place it on your body, tap a few buttons in the Omnipod 5 app, and you're ready to go. There's no tubing to prime like with traditional insulin pumps, and it's virtually pain free, so you never have to see or handle the insertion needle. Want to try Omnipod 5 for yourself? Request a free Omnipod 5 starter kit today, but by visiting omnipod.com diabetesconnections terms and conditions apply. Eligibility may vary. This week on Diabetes Connections why don't we talk about our skin more? When you or your child is diagnosed with diabetes, you quickly realize the skin is in for a rough time. Endless pokes from needles, infusion sets, CGM wires. You make it work. But what if there was a better way? I'm talking to Marie Schiller and Kent Manson. They've teamed up to help now and in the future. The help right now is called SiteHero, a recovery patch to help sites heal. And for the future, they're working on a way to scan an area of the skin and help identify better injection or infusion sites at home. This podcast is not intended as medical advice. If you have those kinds of questions, please please contact your healthcare provider. Welcome to another week of Diabetes Connections. You know, we aim to educate and inspire about diabetes with a focus on people who use insulin. I'm your host, Stacey Sims, and as I said last week when I came home from mom's night out DC I got a very bad cold. I am feeling okay, but I still sound like garbage. So I'm really sorry about that. No time to worry about this cold because we are busy. Nashville is this week and I'm really excited to meet everybody there. I get so many good questions and comments at these events and somebody asked me at the DC event to comment like what do I think about all the functional cure research we've been hearing about? We mentioned this in last week's in the News episode. You know, so much going on right now with islet cell transplantation with stem cells. There's a couple of people from one of the major trials who have been speaking out a lot. You've seen them on social media. I Am sure. So what do I think? I'm really excited about it. But we are still so early here. And my big questions are not necessarily will it work? Because I do think it will work. I'm very optimistic about this. We're seeing great things, especially advances in the techniques that do not need immunosuppressant drugs. That's really exciting. But how is this going to scale up? How are we going to pay for it? We have couple of million people with Type one in this country. How is that going to work? What would it look like? I'm not asking these questions to be negative, of course, I'm very excited about this research, but these are questions we have to ask and think about. And same person asked me. So okay, if that's my reaction, what do I think is the biggest tech story going on right now? What advances coming that will be as big as aid systems, for example? And my answer is I don't think it's technology. I, I really don't. I mean, I'm hoping to see more aggressive aid systems. I'm hoping to see more closed, fully closed loops in the next couple of years. That seems to be taking a very long time, to be honest with you. I mean, we, we know there are people on DIY systems who have done that for years, so we know it's possible. But as I said in my prediction episode a couple of weeks ago, I think it's GLP1s. I think the big story is going to be GLP1 medications for people with type 1. And I think it's going to be the biggest advance for people with type 1, probably since CGM or since aid systems. And I expect we're going to hear a lot more about those studies as we get closer to the summer conferences. There are a bunch of studies happening right now to show that GLP1s can be used safely and very effectively in people with type 1. I know a lot of you as you listen are already using this medication, but you know, we need these studies for obviously for proof for a larger population and we need them for insurance coverage. So stay tuned. And you know, if GLP1s are one of the most talked about aspects of diabetes, I would say one of the least talked about is skincare. We have always thought that infusion sets were the weak link of pumping since day one. And part of that is just because skin is so delicate. But you're basically told, here's the deal, do your best. And most of the help for irritation or for issues comes from the community. But finally, we got something new. I'm talking today about Healthy Sites, a new initiative from Kent Manson and Marie Schiller. Many of you know Marie Schiller. She is a power player in diabetes. She lives with type one. She's got more than 25 years of experience with product innovation and development. I met her back in, I think, 2018 when she was at the Eli Lilly Cambridge Innovation Center. She also co founded the T1T Exchange, which is the largest US type 1 diabetes registry. So we are talking about two big ideas here. They have a product sitehero that is designed to soothe infusion and injection sites, and that is available now. But they are also working on something to help people find the best available areas on their body to avoid scar tissue and bigger issues before they develop. My conversation with Kent Manson and Marie Schiller right after this. We've always been about using incredible tools like the Dexcom G7 in a way that works for us. Since Benny moved home, he's going to school and working locally now, we had some conversations about what follow looks like at age 21. For us, that means my husband follows, but just for urgent lows. I love the options of being able to adjust how we follow, you know, in case he gets sick or he just wants more help. You can use Dexcom in whatever way works for your family. You can even share your glucose data with up to 10 people. And it's the only CGM system that still allows us to follow and. And still be connected to an insulin pump. By downloading the Dexcom follow app, followers can view your glucose data directly from their smart device, whether they live down the street or across the country. Visit dexcom.com to see how this powerful tech fits into your routine. Kent Manson and Maurice Schiller, welcome to Diabetes Connections. Great to talk to you. I'm excited to have you here. Thanks for being on the show.
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Awesome. Excited to be here.
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We're excited to be here.
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Yeah.
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All right, let me just set the table a little bit. Tell me a little bit about how you came to Healthy Sites and Locasana. And, Marie, let me start with you. You have an extensive background in diabetes. I know a lot of listeners are very familiar with you, but talk to me a little bit about how you came to this.
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Stacy, That's a nice way of not calling me old. Not bad. So awesome. Well, as many of you know, my passion, my everything, I guess, has been doing product development in diabetes and obesity and sort of the metabolic space. So that's what I've been doing for My entire career, Kent and I have had the opportunity to work together, as he's also been in the diabetes field. And actually, Stacy, I might flip it to Kent because Kent is where sort of our healthy sites in Locasana really stemmed from. So, Kent, tell us where the journey started.
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Well, the journey, I can get to the journey here in a minute, but my background was also in marketing and being around deploying products into the market and started in the consumer side, converted to the healthcare side. And in my last role was in a commercial leadership role at a biotech that was focused in the diabetes space. And that's where I met Marie and, you know, sort of how we ended up here. I was leaving a diabetes tech conference and sort of ran into one of the leading clinical researchers, clinicians in diabetes care, in type 1 diabetes care, specifically, Dr. Satish Garg. He's the founder and executive director of the Barbara Davis center out of Colorado. And in sort of a casual discussion, we were talking about how much progress had been made with tech development, the aid systems, the algorithms, how far they've come, the prevalence and utilization of tech by the people who need the tech by type ones now expanding into type twos. And Satish made the comment. He said, man, we've made so much progress. Now someone really needs to start to focus on skin health and tissue health. And it just kind of caught me a little off guard. And we had a brief conversation. But in that conversation, he went as far as saying, you know, this is something that he had seen for a long time in his practice. He was very passionate about it. And he said, hey, you know what? What people really need is they need a stud finder. And he was teasing out this concept
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stud finder like you use on your wall.
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Yeah, you know, the laser that goes, beep, beep, beep, we've got the spot to put the nail.
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Yeah, yeah. He said, people need a stud finder. They need to be able to scan their skin and to basically tell them, hey, don't inject here. This is not a good site, or beep, beep, beep. This is a good site. And so, you know, I went away from that discussion and just couldn't really stop thinking about it. At the same time as he was saying this, there was some very interesting and compelling research that was being published. And I just went away and did some diligence and did some thinking and some research on this topic and talked to some other clinicians, and really everybody was saying the same thing. Yeah, this is a real challenge. People are living with this challenge every day, and it's largely overlooked. And so at that point, we were. It was just sort of my mind was focused on this device concept. And so I reached out to Marie. I knew Marie, we were collaborating together on some other projects and just said, hey, you're. You have the. The ideal background. Is this a good idea?
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Yeah.
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You know, kind of walked her through what I had learned, and she said, yeah, I think it's a good idea. And then ghosted me for. For a while and then. And then. And then resurfaced and. And just said, yes, this is a good idea. We should do this. And, you know, sort of the rest is history. It brings us to where we are today.
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Well, Marie, I'm gonna let you respond because, you know, we're getting the whole story here. But you live with type one.
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Yes.
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And I think, as everybody listening is saying, yeah, this is a huge problem. Infusion set bumps. Infusion set problems. Would you mind sharing more of what the problem is as someone who lives with type one?
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Yeah, absolutely. And, Kent, to clarify, you call it ghosting. I call it noodling in my br.
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Ideas.
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Yes. So, yeah, Stacey. I was diagnosed as a young child. I was nine years old. And so I've had a lifetime of living with diabetes, and I've gone back and forth between multiple daily injections and pumps. I was that person who didn't want the pump on my body, all those good things. But now with aid, things are getting better. But sometimes your days just stink and you're like, why do they stink? Like, I haven't eaten anything and my sugars are just creeping like this, and I'm not in a stressful meeting. Like, there's no explanation. And so as we've started to look more and more at this, and we know it, I mean, we know it from my work when I was at Lilly, that there's a high rate of infusion set failures. There is, technically, what the term is called is lipohypertrophy. So to describe what lipohypertrophy is, is typically when you are putting your insulin into your subcutaneous tissue. You've got nice blood flow there, sort of in your capillary beds, and you can absorb the insulin. If you start to get inflammation there and it gets angry and you start to get inflammation response, what does it do? It forms scars. And that scar tissue over time gets into, like, a hard rock. So you try to put your insulin in, and the insulin has nowhere to go. Right. And so that is when it starts to get really severe and you can do. The term that clinicians are supposed to use do is manual palpations. I don't know about your son, Stacey, but I have never had a manual palpation exam done by anybody. Right. And.
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Oh, no, you know what, you'll laugh. His endo is actually pretty big on that. Yeah, well, I don't know about. I mean, it sounds pretty intense, basically. I know.
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I mean, it's just literally he's touched his body.
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Like, do you have scar tissue here? Do you have. And I know this because we're going to get a little off topic for a second, but I know this because when he was like 11 to 14, he was like, absolutely not. He was more self conscious. It was a big deal at visits. He was like, do not touch me. And now they joke about it because he's 21 and he's like, go for it. But. But of course, we have one of the best endos in the land.
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I know. And my endos are awesome. And maybe they just assumed I was doing self exams, so.
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Right. Well, you were. You're a patient. I would think you knew everything and did everything.
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Right. But even then, Stacy, when they can feel them, that's like the more severe stage. And once it becomes fibrotic, you can't reverse it. It's really hard. So ideally we'd be able to pick it up right when it starts to get angry and we can sort of say, give it a break. And so we know of things like sight rotations and all those things that we try to practice, but there's not enough real estate. We're all having challenges and it's a hidden symptom. So I'm like, I don't know. And I don't know if it's this piece, that piece. And so this is where as I was sitting there, noodling, I had my pink kit and my first reaction, Stacy. And you know this more than it, like, I can't add another step. Like, we don't have any time left for diabetes. Right?
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Yeah.
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But then I was like, I think it's actually going to save me time because I can't remember if I did, you know, when my right arm was last or, you know, on my backside. And then I was like. And then I sit there on my stomach and I'm like, eeny, meeny, miny, moe, which one's going to be best? Right? And I kind of look at the spots and I'm like, I think this is good. So I'm like, oh, My gosh. I could pull my, my stud finder out and I could just find it. And from the blood glucose space I always knew not you can't be bigger than five seconds, right? Fat, you gotta be faster than five seconds. So that's been the mantra around the simplicity of the device is like we can't add that much time. And so I called Ken back and I said, look, we should start digging into the, I call it the tech stack to see if we can actually do something. And we had a discussion very early on to say, it cannot be in the clinician office. We can't again sort of bring that into endocrinology. And how is that going to help? Because it's not going to be the day to day that we need at home. We need people using it sort of when they're using it. So we said number one, it has to be at home, so it has to be simple, it has to be cost effective. Right. We know that this is not going to be a diagnostic instrument that's being placed for thousands of dollars into a physician office. And that's important because when you think about sensing technologies, you got to sort of look for ones that can get you to that cost point. So that's where we were. And we've been, and we've been sort of developing concepts and we're just at the point that we will bring some clinical prototypes in to collect some data and we'll use ultrasound as sort of a source of truth where we can get some good resolution. You can use what they call OCT devices as well. So this is probably more technical than we need to get into, but this is sort of where the journey for me has gone. And I will clarify. Even though we think of a stud finder, it takes a lot of time for a patient to go, okay, let's move from the wall to wall to wall to wall. So actually the concept is more of like a grid dynamic where you can kind of pick an area and then we'll scan and we'll identify the best spot within that grid. And if there's no spot in that grid, we'll go, eh, and you can move to the next spot. It won't be that bad. It won't be right.
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Right. So Kent, let me ask you, I mean, when I' so tell me if I'm getting this right. We've already brought my son into this, so we'll continue to throw him under the bus. He has his favorite areas. Right. He's not great at site rotation. It's been the bane of my existence for 19 years, you know, just trying to do these site rotations. Is this a tool that the goal? Cause I know it's not out yet, so we can't make claims, but would the goal be something like. Or would one goal be something like. Okay, he likes to use this part of his stomach. He could use this to find a new place among all the places he's using in his stomach. Kent right back with more of that conversation. But first I want to bring you a word from our community.
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One of our core beliefs at Blue Circle Health is that people with type 1 diabetes shouldn't have to fight for what they need to live. So Blue Circle Health created a free six month virtual clinical care, education and support program for adults with type 1 diabetes so you can focus on living, not just surviving. Blue Circle Health is made possible thanks to generous funding from the Helmsley Charitable Trust and offers clinical care, insurance, navigation, diabetes supportive counseling, case management, peer support and community education and nutrition prescription assistance, and an Intro to CGM program. We're available in more than 20 states and counting and we've helped more than 1,000 adults with type 1 diabetes since January of 2024. You can sign up and learn more today@bluecirclehealth.org to get started. Together we can show the world that better T1D care isn't just possible. It's available. Yeah, absolutely. We, as Marie described it as like a grid. Like within that grid there's lots of different micro sites. And what your son doesn't have right now is sort of visibility into where those are and where they aren't. So he can't see how to create long term sort of remediation of the sites, the zones that within that grid that are no go. And he can't even see where the pockets are, the microsites are that he could utilize. And so the device is going to start to give him some of that insight and clarity.
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Got it.
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Marie, would you sort of agree with that?
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And Stacey, the other thing that we're hitting now with the aid systems is you need to have the CGM and the pump talking and your body insulates the two devices. So even if your son was a great rotator, if he wears his Dexcom on his stomach, he can't put his pump on his back and the arms are even a little tricky. So that's with me. I wear my Dexcom on my stomach and so I can't use any of my back region. So I'm a stomach girl too. So, you know the stomach is like, okay, we're in this area. We keep defining this microsite where we can sort of grid it as the best explanation of that. It doesn't mean, Stacy, that you're never gonna rotate, but we also think you're like your son when he takes that and it's like, wow, 50% of your sights probably aren't very good right now. That might give him the encouragement to say, well, what happens if I took this device and I went on my right side of my stomach? Or how does it look when I go on my right arm and he's gonna be like, wow, it's 100% open.
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Yeah. Yeah.
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So I think just that feedback loop of letting people know where those sites are and explaining why sometimes your, your sugars stink.
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As somebody has that new feedback loop, that information that they don't have right now, we believe that's going to sort of empower them and motivate them to rotate their sites and to, to utilize over. I mean, we're talking about a long period of time, right?
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Oh, yeah.
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This is, we, we've got to manage this over a long arc, a lifetime. And so we think that this insight and this feedback loop is really going to help them from an empowered position, a more intelligent and informed position. Think about how they choose their sites and use their sites.
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So again, knowing that this isn't out in the world, things can change. But when you're talking about these clinical trials, what does the device look like? I mean, you know, we joked about a stud finder, but I'm like, it's something that you hold. It's small. It's not a clinician's office tool. Can you describe it as it exists right now?
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Yeah. And Stacey, I can actually answer this because I'm not at a public company where I can't say things, but I also might disappoint you because we're still at the journey. When I talk about clinical prototypes and the tech stack, we are still trying to determine what sensors we're going to include to be able to grid. And so you have to figure out how you're going to collect the signal back. Very technical elements. We have also mechanical designs of what the product is going to look like. And within probably a month from now, I'll have what they call sort of non functional prototypes that I'll send you one so you can show your audience as soon as we get that out. But think about classic ergonomic design. Like a lot of people aren't going to hold a pen and if it's a pen, you're not going to get microsites. Right. So it needs to have a big enough surface area on the bottom that you can grid and something that's easy enough to hold but not so big that you don't want to travel with it. With that said, we also are thinking about people who are like, I'm not going to do this every time I do it. So we have a marking device. So every Sunday I could mark three sites and then I'm done for the week. So it might not have to be a device that you need to carry with you all the time because we want to give people that freedom or we haven't talked a lot about it, Stacy, but people taking large doses with basal shots or, you know, if you're taking 100 units with multiple daily injections, that's almost worse lipohypertrophy because you get these big sort of welts that you need to do. So NDI, it's a slightly different user experience. And even CGMs, right? There's a reason why CGMs work really well in your arm and not so much on your stomach at times. And so we need to look at the different dynamics between what a good site for CGM is versus a good site for an insulin site.
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That's interesting, right, because the CGM sites aren't putting anything into your body other than the cannula.
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Right.
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So I've always thought of those as less scarring and less traumatic. But is there another difference I'm not thinking about?
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It's actually a little bit more complex. And you're right, less is known, I will tell you that. But as we have gone out and you'll start to see a few publications that are coming out about sort of what's going on. Is there some scar tissue from just sort of the blunt force of sort of getting the wire in? But it's not just the injury, it's what the site. What is an ideal site for a cgm? Right. Is there different dynamics between blood flow and tissue that make one site more accurate or not? Right. And we all know, like the day one saga, that you don't have stability yet. What if we can find out that day one is better in some spots versus other spots? Or when you start to get to the 15 day wear, what's going on in days 13, 14 and 15 where you start to lag? And a lot of that is the sensor. But we've never looked at the tissue. We don't know what's going on that could be influencing it. And so that's where with our device we can start to learn.
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I want to talk about Healthy Sites as well.
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We wanted to sort of talk about that journey. So we talked with the device, right. And sort of we said, okay, this is a no brainer, but a lot of times when you have a diagnostic and right now we are giving guidance about where to go, but it's like, but what do you do if like you have an irritated sight? And so we started thinking about, are there treatment dynamics here that we should be considering. So first of all, there are two different concepts, two different ways to address it. So we split the concept. So we have a medical device company, Locasana, and then we started Healthy Sites, which we said instead of going down a drug delivery, sort of really complicated, we said, let's go for, you know, the low hanging fruit. Right. Let's look at what's going on at the surface level. We've got the adhesive irritation, we've got the pump bump, we've got all these things that are bad and people are struggling. So hence became Healthy Sites. And then, Ken, do you want to talk a little bit about what we did with Healthy Sites as far as the research and where we came up with our sort of product concept on the recovery patch?
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Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And I think that's right, Ana. I mean there's been like several moments in this journey where Marie and I have sort of come to these sort of crescendo moments where you just have like this realization. One of those moments, I think if I were to try to summarize it, is that even though there's really strong evidence of the role, the active role of skin and tissue in clinical outcomes, literal clinical outcomes related to the therapy, it's generally viewed as a passive participant. It's not something you're thinking about as like. But this is a very active, on a daily basis, an active participant in your therapy. If you're a type one and now the device is literally adhered to your body, the drug is administered in the reliability, as Marie's already said, the reliability of the absorption of that drug is heavily influenced by your tissue. So that I think is just sort of kind of like been a wave that we've experienced as we've gone through this journey and based on that realization just said, wow, like there's no sort of simple products that are specifically designed to fit the site change routine.
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Yeah.
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And so we, we wanted to go right at that and say, hey, there are some good products that are used in that routine. How could we improve them? How could we sort of build a better long term protocol that people can utilize and access in a very simple way? And that's what really led to this idea of healthy sites.
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So what is the product?
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The first product is that we've launched, and we just launched five weeks ago is it's a product that we call site Heroes. And we spent a while, I mean Marie's background, she started in formulation and working across a wide range of different material substrates. Even in my background, I have experience looking at different materials and manufacturing processes. And we spent a lot of time looking at a lot of different modalities that we could utilize. And we ended up with hydrocolloid as being one of the most proven and well characterized materials for creating the best, an optimal environment to heal a wound. Which is essentially what an insertion site where you've had a cannula inserted into your abdomen or a part of your body for days. It is. And so we landed on a hydrocolloid. We spent time really assessing the size of that hydrocolloid. How could we design the right sort of medical grade hydrocolloid that could deliver multi day wear. And then we are fortunate enough to sort of develop this and find a great manufacturer. This domestic where we're utilizing a proprietary manufacturing process that just allows us to very efficiently and effectively deliver sort of topical actives to give a booster to that healing environment on the skin.
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B
Right. Can you see my, can you see the patches? So I just wanted to be able to sort of show. So this is Kent. I don't know if you have a box right there that sort of. I don't have a box sitting next to me, but these are the six. So as you think about, you know, they've been designed to fit right around that site where you're injecting. It is not meant to deal with the whole adhesive issue. Right. That is a pipeline product that we are still developing. This is really for that pump bump or the bump you get after an injection. And we are, we say right now at least 24 hours. If you keep it on longer, it works better. That's the concept of hydrocolloids. The longer you keep them on, sort of the better healing that you get. People always say to us, I don't want to wear it that long. The feedback we've heard, because I've had it, I've been wearing it for six months, is I didn't even know it was on. I forgot it, I couldn't see it. You can't see it on your skin. So it's really a sort of very non invasive approach to sort of get this on there and get the healing to occur there. So we're putting it on right after you take out the set or right after you do the injection and go from there.
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So that's what I was asking. So in other words, this isn't something you put the site through. You do not use this on the skin. During you take your infusion, set off, you put this on immediately. Do you need to clean the skin first, do anything like that?
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B
Yeah, we say. The one thing we would say is if you do what you're typically doing, with one exception, alcohol swabs are generally not friendly for your skin. Right. And so if you talk to CDC ess, they'll say, be careful with alcohol because it dries your skin out. Some people are still doing that. So we've had a few people who have, like, rubbed it with alcohol and then put it on, and they're like, oh, it feels itchy. And I'm like, it's itchy because of the alcohol. Yeah, but so that's the one thing that we say is sort of try to stay away from those sort of abrasive. But if you typically wet it down or use like an anti adhesive or something to get off, go through all those steps, let it dry, and then put it on. For me, I don't do any of those things. I slap it on. So
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sometimes I feel I slap it on is like the hidden diabetes motto. Right? That's how Benny is like, you're talking about alcohol. I'm like, I'm just thinking in my head, has he ever cleaned a site since I stopped doing it when he was like, I slap it on.
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Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
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A
But, you know, the group you're working with, that's why I love, you know, Kent, we've just met recently, but Maria, I've known you for years, and so it's exciting to me, you know, I don't know anything about this. You know, I haven't used it. But knowing that you, as a very realistic person who lives with type one is, you know, is involved in this, I think it's very reassuring. And I know it's not gonna be something where, you know, you do have to take 5 million steps and then sit in a hyperbaric chamber and don't move to make it work.
- [30:47]
B
No, no. And Stacey, you bring up a good point there about, like, right now we're sort of going after the insult Happens, right. Obviously the holy grail is pre and trying to come up with solutions that can either like completely prevent or mediate during the delivery instead of, you know, working on the recovery side. So we've got those products that we are continuing to test to say can we do it during, after? And as you understand Stacey better than anyone, all of them have different regulatory paths. Right now we are truly just dealing with surface level issues. Soothing the skin, preventing scarring. We're not saying anything about sub Q benefit. We have not done those studies. We have done all of the skin related testing to make sure no irritation, none of that. And we've got the feedback that says yes, when I take the pump, pump is gone, meaning it's not raised anymore. The redness is still there. The redness takes still about that sort of three to five days to sort of quell down. But you can certainly see an acceleration
- [31:55]
A
and healthy sites is a live website. SiteHero is available for purchase.
- [31:59]
C
It is live. And we've been just sort of blown away. We've been thrilled. We basically just turned the lights on. We had a group of people that we reached out to to try the product and it's really gone from there. Our main objective early in the, in the launch was to just get feedback. We had a group that had beta tested a couple of different iterations of the product, but there's nothing like open market feedback. And so, so that was our number one goal. And I think now we've gotten tremendous feedback. We know it's not a, as Marie just described, it's not a silver bullet, but it is a real tool to have in the tool belt. And I mean we've, what we've seen in a short amount of time is just got us very fired up. And I think we're actually learning more and more about the real sort of day to day challenges, especially from the mothers, the mothers who are caring for young, whether adolescent or even younger children living with type one. They have been incredible to us and they don't really know this yet, but like they have become like our motivation, our benchmark. There's a couple of kids in particular, Avia and Wells and Bain, and there's others that I'm not mentioning. But in Hudson, these kids have become like a real motivational benchmark for us to just design very simple, practical products that can be utilized in their routine. One of the things we're hearing that at first we were kind of like, oh, okay, like everybody looks at it like, well, it's like a pimple patch, but it's for my size. And, and on the one hand they're right. I actually love that because that's a very simple use case. You, you have a, and people know what it is. You put a patch on it. And we are using a hydrocolloid. Pimple patches use a hydrocolloid. I think the one thing we would say is like a hydrocolloid is not a hydrocolloid. Is not a hydrocolloid. Like there's different grades to the hydrocolloid. You know, in this case, like your skin hasn't broken out. Like you actually have like it's broken down by a cannula or an insertion site. And you know, we, we have created a very high quality, long term wear
- [34:13]
B
hydrocolloid for you and others listening. You can go to the healthy site Instagram if you're on it. The thing for me, which has been awesome for like these adolescents, not the little guys and girls with diabetes, but they're participating in sight change and so they're like holding the patches and they're like, oh my gosh, I can put it on. And they're like describing, it's not so red. So it's been a really cool thing just to have them feel. And actually adults like having used it for six months, it becomes habitual. I'm like, oh my gosh, I don't have it. We had a guy the other day say, well, gosh, we need travel packs. You know, I mean we're just really getting, you know, some good, good response.
- [34:51]
A
Excellent. Like we've said healthy sites, a site here that's out there. To be clear though, the device, the so called stud finder, the grid that is not available. Just to be clear, you've already kind of said that, but I don't want people to mistake that.
- [35:05]
B
Absolutely. Thanks for clarifying, Stacey. That's awesome. Yes. That will have to go through the traditional sort of device development pathway. So we'll get the data set, we'll continue to design the commercial prototypes and we're looking probably in the 2 to 3 ish years to be able to get that through approval.
- [35:22]
A
I have one or two more questions about this whole project.
- [35:25]
B
Yes.
- [35:26]
A
But I, I don't want to forget to ask you. This year I'm asking all of my guests for their like a mention of a diabetes organization that has made a difference for them. It could be nonprofit, it could be a company, it could even be a person. I'm putting you on the spot. I didn't tell you I was going to do this. Marie. Let me start with you. Can I ask you, is there just one?
- [35:44]
B
I was going to say this is. This is going to be hard. And for all of those, my nonprofits, I love you dearly. I guess for me, Stacy, and it's an impact on me because it allows. Where I feel I can give back the most is the diabetes link. It is helping so many young adults in that age range, 18 to 30, type 1 and type 2 diabetes. And for me who lived through it, without that support, it's tough. Your son is in sort of that period now. There's just so many life changes, and then you throw diabetes in at it. So it's a peer support mentoring organization that has all sorts of resources. So I love what they do and encourage everyone to look them up and if you can contribute in any way you can.
- [36:26]
A
I love it. Kent, I know you don't live with type 1 or diabetes, but any organization
- [36:30]
C
you want to shout out, I echo what Marie just said. I think I could name like a dozen very easily, without any hesitation, Beyond Type one. And what Beyond Type one has recently done, I mean, it's an amazing organization. I think what. What they're doing right now in terms of creating educational materials that I would describe as, like, very edible for a certain generation, I think is very powerful. It's very needed. Healthcare typically lags, so health education is lagging. The ability to sort of get. Take in a lot of complicated information and be able to understand it and sift through it and organize it is very hard. So most people don't. And I think that some of the tools that they've recently deployed are just outstanding. And so I think we just have to mention them. I think they're doing a lot of great work. But there's so many organizations that are doing amazing things.
- [37:25]
B
I think On Beyond Type 1, there's a marketing person with diabetes, and I'll quote him by saying, like, people don't want diabetes to not look fun or to be like a disease, and they want it to be cool. And in that club. And I think Beyond Type one is doing a really nice job to make it feel like we're the cool group of people and get that word out and we can do amazing things. And so I love that as well.
- [37:56]
A
So back to healthy sites in Locasana. What's the dream? I'm going to ask each of you, like, the big, you know, we're going to come back in 10 years and talk about this. Marie, let me start with you. What is the big goal here?
- [38:08]
B
Yeah, I Mean, the big goal is that real estate's not a problem anymore. I guess that's where I would say if people say, I have no problems and I've been using a pump for 60 years, I would say less site failures, less frustration because of those site failures. And then I'll just, you know, I'll share a story. We were talking about, you know, both products with an individual who has type one. It's actually a guy who was in his early 20s, and he started talking about the social aspects of all the spots, Stacey. And like, I just naively, you know, you naively think it's like a girl thing. I don't know, you know, and that was my own bias. But he said, you know, Marie, guess how many times in the summer I'd be at a pool party with all my high school friends? And the first question every time was, why do you have all those spots all over you? And I was like, oh, my gosh. You know, and for someone who probably has never been in a bikini, I'm like, yeah, I guess that that's a problem. I get it.
- [39:08]
C
You.
- [39:09]
B
So, yeah, that's what I think. My big, hairy, audacious goal is to take that any stress related to where you're putting things and make it go away.
- [39:18]
A
Yeah. How about you, Kent?
- [39:20]
C
Yeah, I think to complement what Marie just said in something. I mean, we talk about this all the time, that people are expected right now. People are expected to manage irritation marks and compromised skin on their own without any guidance or any support. So our big dream and the reason we're super motivated to do this is to eliminate that. To give them a tool that gives them visibility into what's going on in their tissue and to then also wrap around, through healthy sites, very simple products that can be used over long periods of time to mitigate those marks, that irritation, and to maintain healthy sites.
- [40:04]
A
Excellent. Well, thank you so much for joining me. I'm definitely going to go check it out. I really appreciate it, Kent and Marie, and we wish you the best. Keep us posted.
- [40:12]
B
Awesome. Thanks, Stacy, so much.
- [40:14]
C
Yeah, thank you, Stacy.
- [40:21]
A
Of course. I'll link up everything we talked about over at diabetes-connections.com you can probably find it in the show notes as well, wherever you are listening. But if you have any trouble, always come back to the website. Every episode has a dedicated homepage with all of the information. I know some of you have already used healthy Sites. I'd love to know what you think. We'll put a conversation in the Facebook group Diabetes Connections, the group and let me know how they're working for you and what you think. And if you have any feedback on the Stud Finder or whatever they're actually going to call that product, I'm sure they'd love to hear from you as well. You can always contact me. Stacyiabetes-connections.com all right, thank you to my editor, John Buchanis from Audio Editing Solutions. Thank you so much for listening. I'm Stacey Sims. I'll see you back here soon, hopefully feeling better and without this lousy cold that won't go away. Until then, be kind to yourself.
- [41:17]
C
Diabetes Connections is a production of Stacey's Sims Media.
- [41:21]
A
All rights reserved.
- [41:22]
B
All wrongs avenged.
- [41:29]
A
From the very beginning, they mean everything to you, and that means you do anything for them, especially if they're at risk. So when it comes to type 1 diabetes, screen it like you mean it. Even if just one person in your family has type one, you are up to 15 times more likely to get it, too. Screen it like you mean it, because one blood test could help you spot type 1 long before you need insulin. Talk to your doctor about how to screen for type 1 diabetes, because the more you know, the more you can do. So don't wait. Visit screenfortype1.com to learn more. Again, that's screenfortype1.com.