I have a few thoughts
Scott Benner
Dear DexCom makers,
At some point while I’m coming up my driveway my iPhone connects with my home Wi-Fi. At that moment I could stream content from my phone to any computer or television in my house. Pretty cool I say but you know what would be even cooler?
Being able to link Arden’s DexCom CGM to my wireless...
I’m just an idea man but please stick with me.
If the transmitter and the receiver ‘spoke’ to my
Wi-Fi. There would be no need to wear the receiver while inside. Not to mention no need to sleep with the receiver! Have you ever slept with a hunk of plastic next to you? Not fun.
And the main reason to make this improvement. You could design and sell simple wireless base stations that would alert the house of blood glucose movement. This would be a fine revenue stream for you. Imagine, alarm clocks, wall clocks, base stations, that flash, beep or both.
Your product is fantastic and in most controlled situations it’s perfect. However, it falls short when Arden leaves the room, the floor or goes to bed. At this point Arden has been wearing the Dex for so long that she sometimes doesn’t hear or feel it when it alerts her.
Imagine I’m in the kitchen making dinner while Arden is upstairs in her room, her blood glucose is falling and she either ignores, doesn’t feel it - whatever. Suddenly my wall clock gently changes color like a tastefully designed BatSignal or Ohhh yes, better yet the DexCom app on my iPhone sends me a push notification. Doesn’t that sound nice?
Here is a real world situation that happens all of the time. I, many times don’t hear the Dex beep during the night (you know because I’m sleeping). It’s too far from my room and the receiver doesn’t come close to waking Arden. She has woken many mornings with a low BG because no one heard the beeping. Do you know what would have woken me up, my new Wi-Fi enabled DexCom alarm clock. Honestly, my just imagined DexCom iPhone app would have woken me too as my iPhone docks in an alarm clock that magnifies it’s audio output. While we’re building the app let’s make a version that shows the line graph and outputs the reports... might as well get all we can out of the app consultant that you’ll need to contract. I’d like an iPad app too if you don’t mind... thanks!
How about a Wi-Fi enabled mattress vibrator. What if the clocks in the house switched to the Dex readout during alarms... how damn great would that be! These don’t need to be what ifs and two seconds of market research would tell you that there is market interest.
Okay, that’s all of the consulting you’re getting out of me for free... Get on the stick and get these improvements to us asap.
UPDATE: I was asked to be vague and so I will be. Let’s just say that the thoughts that I’ve had about how to make improvements to the DexCom are already in different stages of discussion within the company, as well as across the entire industry.
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Our son is 7 and will soon be wanting to go on sleepovers. This is going to be difficult for us because Dexcom rarely wakes him. With 3G connectivity, no problem. The App you mentioned can now alert me at my house. As long as he's in range of a tower, we're set.