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I have a few thoughts

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. 


Does anyone else have a suggestion? Please leave a comment on the newly created post made just for your thoughts!

 

UPDATEI 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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The following are archived comments from this post. You can post new comments below.

Better yet, on top of Wi-fi, why not do what Amazon does with the Kindle.  In the price of the Dexcom include 3G access.  That way, my son's Dexcom could alert me to a BG change at home, work or where ever even if he's at school or a friend's house!

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.
Thursday, February 17, 2011 - 11:58 AM
Scott
Genius sir, c'mon everyone... I see you on Twitter. Comment and then I'll get this to DexCom. I've been known to make a persuasive argument here and there...
Thursday, February 17, 2011 - 12:06 PM
Love these ideas.  LOOOOOVVVVE the sleepover thought.
Friday, February 18, 2011 - 11:37 AM
These are excellent ideas!  And since I am a new iPhone owner, I am totally for the push notifications notion!!  Everything is becoming a part of wifi/3G technology and diabetes devices shouldn't be excluded from that concept.
Friday, February 18, 2011 - 12:16 PM
To be honest, while all this is great, I just want them to hurry the *ell up and integrate with my Animas pump (or Arden's PDM for that matter) so I don't have two devices to worry about.
Friday, February 18, 2011 - 04:49 PM
Doug
my son has been using the Dexcom 7 for about a year and a half now... I requested these same things about a month after we started...  the range on the cgm is a real limitation... and as the father of a young son who isn't awakened by the cgm beeps or vibrations, we have a baby monitor set up in his room so we can monitor the alarms from our bedroom... would be really nice to be able to interact with the cgm remotely (clear alarms, check current bg, see the trend graph...)... sometimes we will still have to walk upstairs to his room and do a blood test just to make sure the cgm is giving accurate info... but that would still save us a lot of potential sleep time.   My original suggestion was some sort of 'docking station' for the cgm at night... could recharge and allow 'remote' access/control of the cgm through the docking station using weg/wifi/bluetooth/ or even a wired connection to another cgm control in another room...  even better would be if you could do away with the cgm receiver altogether and just use a smart phone for all of it... one less device for the child to have to drag around...
Thursday, May 26, 2011 - 11:19 AM