#1218 I Have Vision
Donald is a software engineer who has type 1 diabetes. We talk about technology and how it may be valuable for people living with type 1. - I HAVE VISION
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Scott Benner 0:00
Hello friends and welcome to episode 1218 of the Juicebox Podcast
Donald has type one diabetes here software engineer and he is a person who embraces new technology. So today we're going to talk to him about looping, different things that you can do for your diabetes and something called Vision AI. Nothing you hear on the Juicebox Podcast should be considered advice, medical or otherwise, always consult a physician before making any changes to your health care plan. When you place your first order for ag one with my link, you'll get five free travel packs and a free year supply of vitamin D. Drink ag one.com/juicebox US residents who have type one diabetes or are the caregivers of someone with type one T one D exchange is looking for you go to T one D exchange.org/juicebox. complete the survey and you will be helping with type one diabetes research. All you have to do is complete that survey your answers to easy questions stuff that you already know. We'll help to move type one diabetes research forward T one D exchange.org/juicebox. If you're looking for community around type one diabetes, check out the Juicebox Podcast private Facebook group Juicebox Podcast type one diabetes this episode of The Juicebox Podcast is sponsored by touched by type one find the Met touched by type one.org on Instagram and Facebook and in person sometimes, as a matter of fact, I just committed to their next in person event. Find out more at touched by type one.org. This episode of The Juicebox Podcast is sponsored by the ever sent CGM and implantable six month sensor is what you get with ever since. But you get so much more exceptional and consistent accuracy over six months, and distinct on body vibe alerts when you're higher low on body vibe alerts. You don't even know what that means to you ever sent cgm.com/juicebox Go find out. Today's episode is sponsored by Medtronic diabetes, a company that's bringing together people who are redefining what it means to live with diabetes. Later in this episode, I'll be speaking with Mark, he was diagnosed with type one diabetes at 28. He's 47 Now, and you're going to learn a little bit about him in just a moment. To hear more stories from the Medtronic champion community or to share your own story, visit Medtronic diabetes.com/juice box and check out the Medtronic champion hashtag on social media.
Donald 2:50
Hey, I'm Donald. I've been a longtime software engineer, programmer, technology enthusiast was diagnosed with diabetes type one diabetes a little less than 10 years ago, started fully looping and, you know, really getting into all the tech and open source and all that good stuff. A few years after being diagnosed, so I've definitely gotten familiar with all that. Also listener to the pot. So I'm excited to be here.
Scott Benner 3:20
I'm excited to have you I appreciate you listening. 10 years ago. How old were you?
Donald 3:24
Oh, man, the math. I was about 18 You're 28 now? Yeah,
Scott Benner 3:30
it's not a lot of math. That's fair. So at 18 years old, you were diagnosed? You're 28. Now, is there any type one in your family tree?
Donald 3:40
No, that's the weird thing. We closest we had was type two, grandma, but no type one.
Scott Benner 3:46
Okay. How about other autoimmune for you? Other autoimmune?
Donald 3:49
Yeah. No, nothing really out of the ordinary. Okay. Celiac?
Scott Benner 3:54
Thyroid, anything like that in the family? None of it. Interesting. Yes. Odd. Were you sick before your diagnosis? Do you have any kind of virus? coxsackievirus? Anything like that?
Donald 4:08
Yeah, I don't think it was anything specific. It was the first year that I was in college. And just like, you know, the first few years, or I guess first few months that you're in a college dorm and just, you know, run a bunch of guys. And you know, the hygiene is definitely not kept up from the others. I I feel like I was pretty solid, at least. Yeah, I think just getting sick a lot from that. And the flu. Just stress being away from home caught up. And yeah, I think that's what did it.
Scott Benner 4:34
You were ill a number of times in college. Yeah, just
Donald 4:38
you know, like, flu colds and things like that. Was that uncommon for you? It was it was more frequent. You know, I don't think it was anything that hadn't happened before. But it was definitely more than an apt app and you know, before that, okay,
Scott Benner 4:53
that's interesting. Let's talk about how so you said you're doing what are you looping now? I am looping into z classically, enthusiasts, Stickley looping could actually be your episode title. Good one. But but that's not how it started, obviously. So when you were diagnosed, what did they give you? How long did you do it for?
Donald 5:11
Yes. So when I was diagnosed, it was actually, when I was I remember like, so clearly, I was on winter break. And I was, you know, hanging out with my parents were eating some good Chinese food. And my mom noticed that stinky just kind of water. So eventually that got me over the hospital. It was my family doctor, I see my whole life he was, he was actually pretty pretty with it and gave me like a really good overview of things. Like, I feel like if you have to tell someone like, Hey, here's his whole life, disease, you're gonna have to deal with your whole life, I'm only gonna be able to talk to you about it for a few days. So here's the Crash Course. So he did a good job with that. I was started off on, you know, the manual injection pens, pricking my finger, I think it was Novolog I did that for you know, even a few years after I got to college and got another endo who's really awesome. You know, it's okay, you know, your, your tech guy, you can upgrade to a continuous glucose monitor and insulin pump. But I was still a little in denial. You know, I was like, Oh my gosh, this thing's always gonna be on me. Yeah, that makes it permanent. What if somebody sees it? You know, I'm in college. So I need to, you know, try to feel cool and everything, but ended up getting all the tech and, you know, everybody else thought it was cool, too. So it was a huge quality life improvement.
Scott Benner 6:34
Download what for your friends into that they thought your insulin pump was cool.
Donald 6:40
That's a good question. I don't know. But I felt good about it.
Scott Benner 6:44
I feel like you're telling me that everybody at the d&d game liked your insulin pump?
Donald 6:49
Where you just call the
Scott Benner 6:51
did I get close? Oh, no,
Donald 6:53
actually, I was on like, both sides of the spectrum. I was president for our packing club at my university. And then also in a fraternity. No kidding. So I got to Yeah, I got united both. And it was pretty, it's pretty accepted in both spots
Scott Benner 7:10
about that good for you. The hacking club. What did that consist of?
Donald 7:15
It consisted of, you know, a couple of late nights, and pizza, making some really cool projects. Yeah, we actually had a hackers club. And usually, you know, when most people hear hacking, you think of some guy wearing a hoodie. And you know, he's trying to break into the government's computers or something. How we use the word hacking is for building. So you know, one example is, you know, we might hack together a app that lets you connect to your window blinds, so that, you know, at certain times of the day, you can have that automatically open your buy blinds and close them and, you know, just whatever cool projects, we felt like making it actually one of my early ones was a really basic way to track the last finger I had picked. So you know, it's kind of like, okay, you know, need to cycle through them evenly. And as a fun way to make that kind of stuff easier.
Scott Benner 8:14
So it just kind of kept track of your, your finger picks. Yeah, like, I
Donald 8:19
think I also used it for my dosage calculator, because I didn't like any of the ones that were out there that I found at that point. Interesting. So, so I think it knew, you know, oh, you had just entered your, you know, you just put your finger to get your glucose and use that to Bolus or something. So I'll rotate you know, the next finger you need to go to
Scott Benner 8:40
interesting. That's really something. Have you made other things for yourself that you want to use personally since then? Or is your work been mostly, you know, related to your job?
Donald 8:51
That was towards the end of I did you learn that there was a competition? Competition is probably not the right word. There was a open kind of like bounty where someone said, hey, you know, we know sometimes some of the diabetes sharing servers from popular apps can go down. So you know, we'll pay someone $500 If they can send a notification whenever it was, like the Dexcom, clarity sharing servers went down. So I put it into submission for that someone. I think someone else beat outline, though. They got it in earlier. But yeah, yeah, I remember putting that together.
Scott Benner 9:29
Donald's like, it's not that mine didn't work. It just has got there first, that's all. Yeah,
Donald 9:34
yeah. Mine was like, you know, kind of cool, I guess, I guess isn't really cool.
Scott Benner 9:38
too interesting. Really is. So growing up with type one really happen writing college for you? It did, yeah. And so we're your parents probably weren't involved. Or
Donald 9:50
were they? No, they were not. They were like, very hands off. You know, I remember the firt the start that I had going back To My doctor was he'd written all my formulas on a, on a little index card. Explain what sliding scale was. And like, my parents were like, well, you're better. You're better at math than we are at this point. So we're going to let you roll with it. And it worked out pretty good. Nice.
Scott Benner 10:17
Did you have any? I mean, any odd feelings about that, like just going off to college, but this whole new thing, or did it feel very doable to you? Right now we're gonna hear from a member of the Medtronic champion community. This episode of The Juicebox Podcast is sponsored by Medtronic diabetes. And this is Mark.
David 10:36
I use injections for about six months. And then my endocrinologist at a navy recommended a pump.
Scott Benner 10:42
How long had you been in the Navy? Eight years up to that point? I've interviewed a number of people who have been diagnosed during service and most of the time they're discharged. What happened to you?
David 10:52
I was medically discharged. Yeah, six months after my diagnosis.
Scott Benner 10:56
Was it your goal to stay in the Navy for your whole life? Your career was? Yeah,
David 10:59
yeah. In fact, I think a few months before my diagnosis, my wife and I had that discussion about, you know, staying in for the long term. And, you know, we made the decision despite all the hardships and time away from home, that was what we
Scott Benner 11:13
loved the most. Was the Navy, like a lifetime goal of yours?
David 11:17
lifetime goal. I mean, as my earliest childhood memories were flying, being a fighter pilot,
Scott Benner 11:22
how did your diagnosis impact your lifelong dream?
David 11:25
It was devastating. Everything I had done in life, everything I'd worked up to up to that point was just taken away in an instant. I was not prepared
Scott Benner 11:34
for that at all. What does your support system look like? friends,
David 11:37
your family caregivers, you know, for me to Medtronic, champions, community, you know, all those resources that are out there to help guide the way but then help keep abreast on you know, the new things that are coming down the pike and to give you hope for eventually that we can find a cure.
Scott Benner 11:50
And you can hear more stories from Medtronic champions, and share your own story at Medtronic diabetes.com/juice box. This episode of The Juicebox Podcast is sponsored by the only six month where implantable CGM on the market. And it's very unique. So you go into an office, it's I've actually seen an insertion done online like a live one like, well, they recorded the entire videos less than eight minutes long, and they're talking most of the time the insertion took no time at all right? So you go into the office, they insert the sensor, now it's in there and working for six months, you go back six months later, they pop out that one put in another one, so two office visits a year to get really accurate and consistent CGM data that's neither here nor there for what I'm trying to say. So this thing's under your skin, right? And you then wear a transmitter over top of it. Transmitters got this nice, gentle silicone adhesive that you change daily, so very little chance of having skin irritations. That's a plus. So you put the transmitter on it talks to your phone app tells you your blood sugar, your your alerts, your alarms, etc. But if you want to be discreet, for some reason, you take the transmitter off just comes right off no, like, you know, not like peeling at or having to rub off at he's just kind of pops right off the silicone stuff really cool. You'll say it. And now you're ready for your big day. Whatever that day is, it could be a prom, or a wedding or just a moment when you don't want something hanging on your arm. The ever sent CGM allows you to do that without wasting a sensor because you just take the transmitter off and then when you're ready to use it again, you pop it back on. Maybe you just want to take a shower without rocking a sensor with a bar of soap just remove the transmitter and put it back on when you're ready. Ever since cgm.com/juicebox You really should check it out
Donald 13:46
you know I think I did really walk out from you know some people have probably already heard of the honeymoon phase you know where you're still getting your your pancreas is still putting in some work but you need to kind of help it out with some insulin in the back. So I remember going into the dorm rooms and being able to just crush a ton of cookies and I was like yeah, this seems like the right amount of insulin and they matched up pretty well like as I got diabetes things pretty easy.
Scott Benner 14:12
You think you're a honeymoon maybe?
Donald 14:15
Yeah, I was definitely honeymoon and yeah. And so then after I came down from that it was you know, like, oh, you know, I need to be careful whenever, you know we go out for some drinks because then I learned you know, your liver can't put out glucagon to bring your blood sugar back up. So you know how to learn the hard way from some scary episodes never end up in the hospital fortunately, but I can't say that was up to you know, that was from my own skill or anything.
Scott Benner 14:42
Yeah. Can you give me an example of a scary episode?
Donald 14:46
Yeah, no, this is like a typical night out and we were on our way back and I was not really all the way with it. Probably more from the drinks than anything I had already gave you know all Have my fraternity buddies a good good lowdown of hey, you know, if I ever need anything, here's how you can prick my finger. Here's glucagon, you know, here's some Gatorade to keep under my bed. Here's the signs of hypoglycemia and everything. I let them know. And I got back and I think it had dipped down to like 38. And they were helping me take down some Gatorade and everything, but just
Scott Benner 15:22
you and a bunch of drunk 18 year olds taking care of your 38 blood sugar.
Donald 15:26
You know, I'm sure from like, an outside perspective, it was a beautiful thing at the moment. Yeah, yeah, I it was, it was definitely scary. Well,
Scott Benner 15:35
you know, seriously, letting other people know about your situation was huge for your property right there. Yeah, absolutely.
Donald 15:42
And, you know, it's like, I if I wasn't doing all the other right things, I guess that was one of them. For sure.
Scott Benner 15:49
Well, let me ask you this. What were your agencies like in the first couple years? Oh, jeez.
Donald 15:54
I think the first one when I came in, after being diagnosed was 10 and 11, or some, something pretty high up like that. And then I think my average glucose, you know, I might have lucked out with keeping it under 200 in the honeymoon phase, but it was probably averaging out to like, you know, 190 through 250. Back, like, you know, you know, if, if it really wasn't going well, yeah, I think I think once I had figured things out a bit more, back then. No, probably one ad was like, you know, doing good.
Scott Benner 16:33
Okay. How long do you think it took you to get to that level?
Donald 16:37
A couple years? Yeah.
Scott Benner 16:39
And what about those years? Were they maturing years? Or were they experienced with diabetes? Until you understood it years?
Donald 16:47
Maybe a blend? Oh, man. Yeah, you know, it probably was a blend, you know, kind of going back to feeling a little bit of denial and overconfidence from the honeymoon phase, you know, didn't think it needed a ton of mental effort or just, you know, much thinking from my end. So, I think after I kind of got through that, and just matured up and it's like, okay, you know, this is something that takes effort. This is something that's really important. That's when things got a little better.
Scott Benner 17:18
Okay. Can you tell me what made you feel like it was important to understand? Do you remember, like an aha moment? Or what made you think this isn't good enough? I need to do better.
Donald 17:32
You know, I think part of it, there's actually a programmer is a type one diabetic from Microsoft. And I'm just really, really, really ashamed releasing my inner nerd here. I think it's Scott Hanselman, on Twitter. And he's really awesome influenced through that stuff. And I remember seeing him, you know, some really good consistent glucose numbers. I think he keeps it, you know, like, pretty consistently around 90 or something. Or he showed in some like other graphs, and I was like, Oh, my gosh, like, I know, my endo had said one thing, you know, but I can see someone else actually hitting that, I probably need to do that. So that influence made a big difference.
Scott Benner 18:12
Someone you had respect for and knew about was having outcomes that you saw is hopeful. And you thought if they can do that, I could probably do that as well. Yeah, definitely. Interesting. That's great. I know Scott's name by the way. I don't know if I've ever met him. But it's interesting that you said somebody else like, Oh, I know that name. It's
Donald 18:32
not that I know him personally, either. But by now it kind of feels like it.
Scott Benner 18:35
That's something he's been added a long time as an ad on Twitter. Yeah, yeah. I mean,
Donald 18:41
even with the diabetes scene, I remember seeing him posts about it was like a newspaper clipping from the 90s, or the 80s, when he was in college, and he was doing a little bit of hacking on his PDM to, you know, get it to do some more cool stuff. Amazing.
Scott Benner 18:55
So you're using what at that point, you're pumping and do your work? What pump was it?
Donald 19:03
Oh, I was bravery for me at that point was upgrading to the continuous
Scott Benner 19:10
glucose monitor. So you're MDI with the CGM? Yep, manual injections with the G six, okay, five, six, whatever it
Donald 19:18
was back then. But it wasn't until I got out of college that I actually began looping to Omnipod didn't have to in which was a big win for me. And I think by this point, I heard about the looping scene. And I just saw that I could, maybe it was just the app interface or something. But I was like, Oh, I'm not even gonna bother with the, you know, like the factory app. I'm just gonna use this like open source ones. I think I
Scott Benner 19:47
do it right. From MDI, to looping. Yeah, yeah. Good. Yeah, that's amazing. Well, also it shows that you weren't, I imagine put off by the technical aspects of setting up loop that probably seemed obvious and Easy to I would imagine, oh
Donald 20:01
man, you know, that's a funny thing. I mean, you know, my full time job is setting up technical projects like that, you know, you have to download all this stuff you have to get it set up and then you know, put it on your phone. But it was still a challenge is such a good community that it gets past all those technical issues, which is super incredible. You know, just all the looped Facebook groups and everything else that's out there all those people are making a big difference right? know for sure. That was actually part of why I ended up going from those manual setup steps to the T one Powell service where they just do it for you. Okay.
Scott Benner 20:42
Oh, so Oh, hold on a second. Done. This is strange. I don't usually record this late at night. But my my, like, chameleons getting automatically missed it. So let's hold on a second. Well.
Donald 20:55
That's awesome. You're chameleon.
Scott Benner 20:56
Yeah, I have a chameleon behind me in my office and his tank gets doused right before his lights go out. And it's on a timer. So I didn't Can you hear it? Yes. Okay. Yeah, let's change
Donald 21:09
my insulin pump. It was I usually always do it at night. But there is I just got back from that trip. And I had to do it at a weird time. So my I changed my pump like right before, otherwise, I would have went off.
Scott Benner 21:21
Yeah, so he likes to sleep with more humidity. So for about a minute before the lights go out, the tank gets missed it very heavily, gives him one last chance to, you know, get a drop of water if you want, helps the plants grow, etc. It also helps when later tonight, I can't believe I'm saying this, you thought you sounded like a dork Hold on a second. Wait till later tonight, when fogger that I made myself will come on and bring up his humidity to like 100% for about six hours overnight. Because he actually hydrates through breathing the air. So he doesn't really drink like you would imagine animal drinking out of like a basin of something like that. So he gets all of his hydration through humidity overnight. That's awesome. But no humidifier that you can buy can handle that or holds enough water. So what I have here is a 10 gallon dog food container. So it's, it's opaque so the sun can't get in. So we don't have any problem with getting you know the waterjet and funky, then there are two holes drilled in the top of it. One is for a low speed fan and one is for a three inch tube that goes right up into the bottom of the enclosure. So then there's Jesus guys do sound like an idiot. This is cool. So two inside the water is a UV bulb that keeps algae from growing. And there is also a bubbler. So like if you ever saw a pond that has like fog going across the top of it. So that comes on a timer. It starts to make fog inside of the container and then the air pushing through. It's actually electric the way it does that. It's crazy. It vibrates and heats. And it makes it into fog. It's really interesting. Well, that's so cool. I want to let people know I got that disk from the house of hydro.com. The guys fantastic if you have any needs and then the fan comes on pressurizes the tank and then the the fog escapes through the tube and fills the the enclosure. That's awesome. Yeah. Anyway, I
Donald 23:28
want to make one now just to have a fogger I'm the man oddly proud of it. eautiful long dwell and in our hacker clubs,
Scott Benner 23:36
I would have thought okay, so because they you know, when you set these up, I must have bought four different humidifiers and return them. Well, every time I got one, I was like this won't do it. It's not set up correctly. It doesn't hold enough like blah, blah, blah. It needed to be cleaned too often. You know, there are all kinds of different problems. And one day I just sat down I was like, I'm just gonna make one. Then after I did it, of course, I found somebody online who's like, you should just make one yourself. And I was like, Where was this information? While I was beating my head. I felt like I reinvented the wheel. And apparently I was like three years late. But anyway, I love it. That's
Donald 24:09
that's cool project. Yeah.
Scott Benner 24:11
So okay, Donald. So, when we're done, I'll send you a picture of of Durbin, which is my chameleons. They love it. Yeah. Anyway. So what I like here is that you go to move to loop. And even with your extensive background, which I'm going to ask you about in a second, it still was daunting enough that you reached out and said I need to get somebody else to do this for me. You're not fantastic nowadays, can you do it yourself? Are you still paying someone to do it for you? Well,
Donald 24:41
you know, and I'd even say I did it for myself for a while. I think it was when ironically it was when Heroku had their plane their plan change where you'd have to upgrade from the free
Scott Benner 24:54
seminars a month now or something like that, right? Yeah. And
Donald 24:58
that was ironically I was working at Salesforce at the time who owned Heroku. So I was hearing about some of those comps all well received stuff too, which was, which was good to see. And fun to see like who is in the diluvian community inside of Salesforce? Yeah, I was able to set it up. It was just real pain. When the upgrade happened, I was like, okay, I can do all this stuff, but I just don't want to spend my time doing it. And so when there was messaging out from I can't remember where, but they mentioned T one palace service, they can just set it up for you. So like, yeah, that'd be great. And I pay someone to do that. I
Scott Benner 25:34
actually have a guest on the show who works there. If you ever go find type two stories, John. I think John. Yeah. John, I
Donald 25:43
guess to add on to the history. When I on boarded, I had met Ben West. I was like, Oh, my gosh, you know, you helped me connect Scout that is ultra cool. So from there, I actually did a little bit of work with them to just kind of help out on the few things. And, you know, I tied it up that that just keep working on some other projects, it was a really awesome way to hang out with all of those guys. They're just super brilliant. And, you know, it was fun to work with them for a little bit. Yeah,
Scott Benner 26:14
I hear that. Okay, so you're using loop and you're going along? Does your does your diabetes get easier to manage? Does your agency come down? Does your time and range get better? What do you learn from being automated like that?
Donald 26:28
You know, it was really cool. It was my fiance actually noticed the major change was that I wasn't going low at night anymore. You know, I'm trying to think back to like, you know, what was really causing it, I'm sure I was still just trying to figure things out. You know, just having that that Basal be able to change in I take care of you when you're sleeping? Oh,
Scott Benner 26:52
yeah. Oh, Donald, listen, if if all an algorithm did was let you sleep better, I think it was amazing. You know, the rest of it's a bonus in my eyes. So that's amazing. So okay, so if you were Lowe's overnight, it's a good experience for you. Now, this is a little like, a weird minefield for me to walk through here. So I'm going to try to give a little bit of background, you're going to fill in some gaps that I don't understand. And then we're going to talk about something completely different than what we've been talking about before. Okay. Now, what I have to say is, is that oddly, I find myself in a situation where I have a financial stake in vision AI. And I've never had anything on the show before where I have a connection like that. So I don't really know the right way to handle it, other than to just say out in front, that this is true. Now, having said that, I have made no money from it whatsoever. And it would probably only benefit me if the company were to get very popular, or get sold or something like that. So let me give you some backstory, and then you can fill me in on the things I don't understand. Okay, a man named Justin came to me one day, and started telling me about his his company, Vision AI, and how he wants to use AI to basically give people like a doctor in their pocket. And he said that he wanted to have very good information about diabetes there. And he asked me about integrating the actual podcast into what his AI understands. And I thought, well, this is very weird and interesting. But also Donald, what I thought was, I've already been working on this for like, a year and a half. So behind the scenes, I had been picking through everything I could, keeping in mind, I'm not a programmer, and I don't understand AI at all. All they had going for me was a podcast episode I listened to on a long ride, where this guy got on and described how AI worked, and how he saw it working in the world. And all I could think while he was talking was Oh my god. It trains itself on the knowledge. It's available online, and therefore it has answers based on all this data. I kept thinking, what if it only trained itself on something specific? Like, wouldn't that be amazing? And isn't my podcast very likely the largest repository of diabetes conversations that's ever existed? Yeah. Is there a way for me to get my audio transcribed, and I was actually getting it accomplished. It was expensive, and I couldn't really do it the way I wanted to, but I was doing it. I started with the Pro Tip series and some stuff like that. And I'm telling you, Donald, this is probably a no surprise to you whatsoever. But I could ask an episode of The Pro Tip series and incredibly specific question about diabetes. And the answer that came back was not only insanely accurate, but it felt like I was talking to myself. Isn't that incredible?
Donald 29:59
It's It's crazy.
Scott Benner 30:00
I would think I wrote this. As a matter of fact, the last speaking gig I did, I asked it to go through the Pro Tip series, and break it down into categories and give me talking points. Love it. And when it gave them to me, I looked at them and thought, this is exactly what I would say about this. If I were to stand up and promise, like, this is amazing. So anyway, I was working towards it. But when Justin's like, hey, we kind of already did that. I was like, well, that's better than me doing it, because I don't think I could have afforded it because there would have been a lot of back end cost for me. And it would have been a nice value add for, for the listeners, but I couldn't have asked him to pay me for it. Like the only mean, so I was like, how am I gonna do this, it's gonna, it's gonna break me they're gonna get value, and I'm gonna go, like, you know, broke trying to keep it going for them. So anyway, Justin comes along and says that he has this opportunity, would I be interested? And I said, Absolutely. You know, he asked me to be an advisor for the company, which is the thing I did. And again, full disclosure, I guess, if somebody comes along and buys Justin's company for money, I'll get a very, very tiny piece of it. So I want people to know that, but here's the thing. I'm starting to understand that you're the reason Justin knows who I am. Is that right?
Donald 31:12
It is through a funny turn of fate. Well,
Scott Benner 31:16
thank you. I owe you nothing. Donald, I want to say that upfront. Tell me tell me, you cannot have a peace of mind. Nothing. Okay. But, but tell me how this all happens. Please. Yeah,
Donald 31:27
I mean, well, being here is is you know, I think that's pretty good. Pride does pay off at all. So Oh, man. Yeah, I'm trying to piece that together myself. You know, back to, to me using T one pow. One day, I had gotten an email saying that, hey, there's a new service that is integrated one T one Powell comes out of the box, you click a few buttons and sign up and you know, pay their fee and it's on like, oh, okay, well, let's take a look into this. And I open up the website, oh, this is this actually looks pretty impressive. I sign up and get a call to kind of get integrated and answer any questions I had. So funny enough, just how I had like how I had met Ben in the folk, Ben and John and the folks at u one, Powell is how I met Justin, when I was just getting set up for the product. And after that I had spoke with Justin for a bit, you know, I can talk about this maybe a little bit more after, but I'm just, I was super excited about it. I mean, I had thought about this kind of product for years, before we had the breakthrough of AI models that we have now. And so when I saw someone doing it, I was like, All right, you know, let's see if this is the person or this is the company that's going to do it. But I'm at least gonna be like the waters and see what's going on out a lot of great conversations and eventually mentioned, hey, you know, have you listened to the Juicebox Podcast, it's the best place for advanced advice is really no one else is doing it. You know, a lot of people cover the fundamentals. But you know, when you're 10 years into, and you're really trying to get your eight, a one C down and deal with all the variables of life, like, no one else covers it better than Scott and his crew. And that's
Scott Benner 33:18
so nice that I appreciate that very much. Justin said something to me and tell me if he was just being kind he said that you said or somebody said, it would be cool if I asked it a question. And Scott's like knowledge came out of it.
Donald 33:31
Did you say that? Verbatim? Yeah.
Scott Benner 33:34
That's so nice. Thank you. You saved me a lot of hassle. I appreciate that. Because I was like slaving away behind the scenes trying to make this thing work, because I saw the value in it. Like, you know, I mean, if people don't understand how AI works, I think I did a fine enough job talking about it a second ago, but but all I could keep imagining was like, what if you just trained it on a finite amount of information, but I never imagined that it would actually call from conversation. And where it really threw me for a loop is there's an episode Virginie. I do the math of setting up like stuff, the math of Basal insulin, the math of insulin to carb ratio, that kind of stuff. And we never actually like straight through step by step describe the process for coming up with say your you know, your insulin sensitivity factor. But you can ask the episode how to do it. And it tells you and it's like, if you say to it, like I weigh this, I'm an adult I you know, I move at a average activity level, it will tell you like your insulin sensitivity is about here to here. And I'm like, these are the kinds of things that people struggle with forever and never get the straight answer to imagine you get a range. You start at the low part, you know, the safest part and you work your way up and you at least you have like a dial in idea like, you know, I can turn this knob about this far and try it on my own. Man, I'll tell you, that's when I was like, oh my god, it picked that out of a conversation. Like it really just it flipped my mind a little bit that it could do that. And it made me very excited just like you were describing before. Yeah, absolutely. So then you meet your, your user, you become a user. And how long ago was that? Oh, man,
Donald 35:23
not long, I'd say a few months. How are you enjoying it?
Scott Benner 35:26
What do you find yourself using it for?
Donald 35:28
It's incredible. I mean, you know, I'd say, for what I enjoy about it, it's probably good to mention what I expected, you know, what I would kind of expect a copycat to look like. So what I expected to see was someone take, you know, the existing chat GPT technology, and just kind of, you know, hey, when someone asks you a question, give diabetes related advice, you know, that would kind of be the most generic thing someone could do, and it wouldn't be great. But when I use vision, it's connect. So you know, probably the one of the main parts is that it's connected to your Nightscout and Nightscout, it's already been out there for so long to help collect all this data about your diabetes, you know, it knows your overrides, and knows your insulin that you're putting in your Basal. So your therapy settings, everything, when you ask it questions, you know, first off, it already knows a ton about you. And it's it's snuck that information in and conversations in a bunch of really interesting ways. We can talk about a little bit. But then the other part is that, you know, like, you're mentioning how they want to put your knowledge from all of these podcasts into it. It's really well fine tuned. I mean, you know, I was kind of expecting to give it a little bit of grace. I'm like, Okay, I'll ask it, you know, this really complex scenario that I'm in, you know, like, the hairy scenarios of diabetes. Yeah. And for it to just give a subpar answer, but it was good. Yeah. You know, it was something I would, it's the advanced answer. That handles the scariness of diabetes.
Scott Benner 37:09
I did the same thing you did when Justin, let me try it. The first time, I asked it a very convoluted question about my blood sugar. Now, you know, we were actually in somebody's, you know, account. I was like, okay, you know, what's my blood sugar right now? And it came back and told me and I said, Are you afraid that I'm going to get low? And it said, it didn't expect me to get low. But that if I thought I was going to get low, here's how many carbs I should take to stop that. And then I said, Okay, what if I want to take this many carbs and eat? And then it said, Oh, well, then you'd want to Bolus this much. And I was like, Man, that's not what I expected. either. I was right there with you. I thought for sure this guy was going to show me a sock puppet. You know what I mean? Like, like something that's just like, I know what diabetes is. And it's this and I was like, and when it wasn't that like, while you and I were talking earlier. So I'm in Arden's vision AI account right now, I asked her what my BG was said, the most recent update your glucose levels 159 to stable if you have any concerns, or notice any changes in how you feel it's a good idea to keep monitoring your glucose, like, you know, it does that. I said, I have a low grade fever and avoid a very sore throat. I'm sorry to hear that you're not feeling well. A low grade fever and sore throat can be uncomfortable. And it's important to take care of yourself, especially with type one diabetes, this illness can affect your blood glucose levels. Okay, so you think that's pretty basic, but then, one, stay hydrated, and describes that it says to monitor your blood glucose closely, and it describes that adjust your insulin ISness, if necessary, rest, soothe your throat, consider an over the counter remedy, seek medical advice. Under each one of those bullets gives you like, you know a description of what that is, in case you don't know. And then I said well, how much insulin would bring my blood sugar to 99 then it tells me to calculate how much insulin is needed to bring my blood glucose down to 99. We can use your insulin sensitivity factor, which by the way, it knows what Ardens insulin sensitivity factor is when you're it's in your Nightscout and I'm like, Holy Hannah. And then I said based on your data provider of your insulin sensitivity is this right now, per unit of insulin blah blah blah determine the drop is this I would use a unit of insulin to bring your blood sugar to 99 and then it gives you the please remember, this is a calculation based on typical responses, you know, for people who don't know what they're doing, oh, my god, like this levels you up three levels, you know? Really? Yeah, just fantastic. I
Donald 39:39
know and even you know like that it mentions the hydration that that cracks me up because that was one advanced suggestion I got from my Harry scenario that I was also impressed by it and like, that is a basic thing that I feel like honestly, even if you were talking that a really great endo in person about this very specific situation. They probably forget it You know, anybody what might forget? It's just something you overlook. But to have all of that knowledge in this model, it's not going to forget. Yeah. Yeah. It's it's incredible.
Scott Benner 40:11
Do you see it being something you would need forever? We're like, forever? And do you use it for other things other than diabetes? Hmm.
Donald 40:17
Other than diabetes, so, like, these models are going to be involved in our lives, like how a lot of, you know, website, websites, the internet, you know, all those things are involved in our lives. Now we're talking over over zoom right now. So specifically, I I wouldn't see myself using envision forever. I think, you know, your, your glucose can always, not always get better. But I feel like there's always variables that pop up, you know, right when I've got it, man, best week of the year. And then, you know, the very next week, oh, the community is picking up, you know, why is there anything out of whack? Oh, I'm, you know, instead of putting on muscle right now, I'm trying to lose weight? Oh, you know, it's, it's, it all starts over again. I think it does so much already. You know, some fans, I would be really excited to see, you know, the things I'd always wanted for years was, you know, I had asked, Why can't I track a bunch of events somewhere, and have some system kind of keep track like, okay, you know, I just wanted my walk at 9am. I just, it was, you know, 70 degrees outside, I felt a little sick today. But those over and over and over again. And then have some system some app, give me suggestions based off of that. Yeah. And this is really the first thing that in take the incredible amount of variability from your life, and put it all together and come out with a really simple suggestion. Everything
Scott Benner 41:50
I asked Justin like, is it possible to get to do this is that he goes all that is possible. Like I said something like, Could we get it to a point? I don't know if it does this now. But could you get it to a point where you could say, hey, last Thursday, I ate pizza, you know, just nappies. I'm going to do it again. How was my Bolus ng strategy last time? Anything I asked him, he's like, I don't see why I couldn't. And I'm like, Jesus, it's incorrect. Listen, while you were talking. I've been tired and my hair is falling out what could be wrong with me? Number one, thyroid issues both hypo and boom, like right like that. That's a common complaint for people with type one diabetes. A lot of people have unmanaged thyroids that need help, and they don't know. And they spend their life struggling with these problems, right? And because you're not going to think of that, like, come on, Donald who's gonna go you know, this is probably my thyroid. Yeah, boom, but also gonna be Yeah, to nutritional deficiencies, like vitamin D, vitamin B, 12, and iron, stress and mental health, auto, other autoimmune diseases could cause these symptoms, especially if you have one autoimmune condition, you might be more susceptible to others. There's a thing that you think people know, but they don't. And it's just hormonal imbalance, medication side effects, given these possibilities, bah, bah, bah, like, Dude, I falling short of wondering what I could ask that I couldn't get a reasonable answer back for like, I would like people to know that I don't sign my name on two things like, easily. And a lot of people have come and asked me to partner with this podcast over the years, and I just like, I shoot them all away. And I swear to you, I thought I was getting on a call to shoot Justin away. Yeah, I really did. But here we are. So
Donald 43:31
and one thing I have to say about that, too, is that I had totally thought the same thing, but just just him mentioning the quality of people in the community, you know, like, like, you included, obviously, it was just like, oh, my gosh, you know, I had thought for years that this product will come. You know, it's like how I think back to this really funny term that people use, you know, when insulin was first invented, people were like, Aha, you know, diabetes is now cured. We have insulin that, you know, from a, from a cow that we can put into people, that's it, then they came out with the home glucose meter, aha, it's cured, you know. So you know, really all along, it's breakthroughs that just make it a lot more manageable. When I saw that someone is harnessing the awesome power of these, LLM these AI models. And they're doing it with the high quality folks in the community, as Oh, my gosh, you know, we're looking at a breakthrough right here. This is the very beginning of the next big diabetes tool. Yeah. It's hard not to want to be a part of it.
Scott Benner 44:32
I also think that if I've been paying attention and reading between the lines for the last five years, every time I interviewed Dexcom, they mentioned how valuable data is. Yeah, it's so valuable that we have everyone's data like one day we'll be able to help you make decisions and I feel like that's, that's this right here. I think a lot of people might, might push into this space. I think that's pretty obvious that we're going to see a lot of AI companies come in, some of them will stick and some of them won't as we go along. But This very well might be a situation where being good and first might really be a hell of an advantage. Yeah,
Donald 45:09
and, you know, I think an important thing is, you know, there's an old saying of, you know, garbage in, garbage out, you know, if you have bad data, you know, you're not going to be able to get good outputs from it, you know. So having all of your knowledge in there, and just all the other good stuff is going to be important. Hey, it
Scott Benner 45:29
filled my heart, I'm going to sound like a dope for a second here. But the reason I've been looking into the AI so much, is because I have been having and continue to have this one singular feeling that I put so much effort and time into getting these conversations in one place. But I know the way social media works, and the minute I stopped making this podcast, it's just going to disappear. And so, you know, sometimes people ask me, like, Why do you put out so much content, I'm like, This is how you keep the podcast alive. Like everybody, you know, people are putting out like, one episode a week or every other week, I'm like, Yeah, you have a podcast, you have a hobby, which is nice. And I'm not saying it's not helping somebody, but the minute they take that candle off, that stone is gonna go stone cold, I so I know, keep coming. But I also know the information has to be good has to be interesting. You can't get filler, when you start putting filler content out, you lose people, you know. So all I could think is that one day, all this great information is just going to disappear. And I can't let that happen. You know, like, that's just it's a disservice at this point.
Donald 46:34
It is, and you know, it's like, you know, for 1000s of years, people have been able to kind of preserve their thoughts through writing, which is great. But you know, the paper is kind of hard to manage. And, you know, you have to get the piece of paper from one part of the world to the other, and come up with the breakthrough, you know, the internet, you can get that piece of paper from that piece of information, you're writing what's in your head, someone else in the world right away, you know, it's like someone else can talk to you. And you know, you might be from 100 years ago, so and then 100 years might be, you know, talking to Scott about their diabetes. Yeah,
Scott Benner 47:08
we can keep building on ourselves instead of starting over all the time. And listen, my example that I'll sound like a crackpot for half a second. But at some point, someone new had to build those pyramids, and I don't see it written down anywhere. And I don't think it was easy as like sliding rocks together. What happens if, you know, like, for whatever reason, like just on a small scale, the podcast, just go I get old, and I just stopped making it, and it goes away. And then you'd be surprised how quickly it'll go back to a bunch of people getting diagnosed. And now there's no like doctor telling them, Hey, you should go check out this podcast, Donald's not telling his friends, you should check out the podcast, like that doesn't happen. And then those people struggle, and they start over and 10 years from now, you hear more and more of the same stories we heard 10 years ago. And I'm not saying that I'm the pinnacle of diabetes knowledge or anything like that. I do think that I have found a way to make it very accessible to a lot of people in a way that makes them want to listen to it. Totally. Yeah. And I think that's really, maybe one of the things I can be more proud of, because there are times like, I think to myself, like this is not like brain surgery, what I'm talking about here, but how come no one else has captured an audience this large before? I
Donald 48:23
mean, I know that seeing that's the incredible part with that information. I mean, you know, I'm sure someone else out there might have that a lot of good info written down. But where is it? You know, I'm looking around for it and not just gonna be able to magically find it, where
Scott Benner 48:38
you put it in a book and you know, God bless readers, but most people don't read. Yeah, yeah. Oh, and I say all the time, like you can have like the secret of life in a podcast. And if it doesn't sound good, people won't listen to it. Right, you know, forget that. They'd have to pick up a book and actually stay focused and read it and forget that these people are looking for this information at some of the most dire points in their life. And you're asking them to now read a book about it. You know, like, it's just, this isn't the time. You know, if I walked up to you, Donald, I was like, hey, Donald, guess what, and I smacked in the head with a shovel a couple of times and handed you a book about algebra. And I was like, I need to know what x is. You'd be like, Oh, what, and I think that's how people feel after they're diagnosed. And even if you've had diabetes, for some time, if you've been struggling with it, you still have that, like, shook feeling all the time. And it's just, it's not reasonable to ask somebody to go read a tome, and then come back and remember everything and put it into practice. And I mean, if we learn nothing about people, you know, we like storytellers, and we like listening to stories. And that's how a lot of us learn. So anyway, I guess what, it's a long way of me saying, I threw in with Justin, and this idea of AI because this already seemed like a natural path to me. And I was trying in the background to accomplish it all by myself from this room and I was When getting anywhere, I don't know how to say this, which doesn't sound pompous. So I'll just say it. I've been write a lot over the last decade about how to help people with diabetes. I feel very strongly about this, that this is a good idea. Completely.
Donald 50:13
Yeah. And I think that's why you're going to see so many, so many respected people and the community kind of blocking around this and trying to, you know, bring it up, you know, as the, as one of the next great tools in our tool belt. Yeah. Well, I
Scott Benner 50:30
agree. So what else? Would you want to tell me about it that I don't know to ask you about it?
Donald 50:33
Oh, man, I had some good use cases come out of it. It's funny, every time I it's like, I love the word, you know, delightful when you're talking about, you know, using something because like, I'll definitely get some like, just just delightful. Like, it feels good. Like, oh, wow, I did not expect this machine to do this. You know, there's kind of the more saints you'd mentioned. You know, I had, hey, vision, I just did a spin class. And now I'm going to go do a long walk to my favorite bagel shop, you know, how can I not go low from doing my workout, but still managed to not go high from my high carb, delicious bagel, those are really cool responses, they go through a lot of things you mentioned on the pod love, they can call out, you know, a call out my specific overrides, because it saw, hey, you have a cardio override, you know, if you're doing spin, that's kind of a cardio exercise, I would use that then. Which just you know, the language tie together is on that blew my mind. And while also being extremely helpful, I think the one that you might have not thought of let me know if you did, but I had, it helped me review my therapy settings. So like, all my different you know, my ice my basil is all of that. The most basic example I had for it was usually I'll chart out my icy and my basil, and trying to make sure I'm not doing anything too crazy. Like, you know, I want to make sure that if at noon, you know, I'm using more basil, I want to make sure I'm using more ice to and they don't have to be perfectly insane. But, you know, that's kind of genuinely how I run it. This is such a pain of kind of going to Google Sheet, it'll pull up all these charts for it. So when I was using vision, during my kind of weekly self appointment with myself, I always have vision, pull up another tab when I'm doing that, like, hey, you know, look at all my therapy settings, give me a text based table, and just kind of helped me understand what my ups and downs from my settings look like. And it did it. You know, I didn't have to go through all of this effort to put that together. So I think having a kind of holistically review your therapy settings is going to be a really big win. And yeah, you know, there's there's so much more they can add on to it. But that was a that was a fun use case. No, it's fantastic.
Scott Benner 52:57
Like, even when I asked it earlier about Arden like moving her 159 It said that her insulin sensitivity, it knew her insulin sensitivity was 61. But that's not really Arden's insulin sensitivity. And let me explain Arden's using dynamic ISF on Iaps. So it changes her insulin sensitivity based on what it sees his needs. So my my point is, is that her set insulin sensitivity right now is like 80. But it knew that right now, because it's looking at the settings that the algorithm has been working off and ISF of 61. That's awesome. And the truth is, I wouldn't have thought that if like you made me think about it right now, and said, hey, you know, move Ardens blood sugar Baba blah, I don't think I would have, I wouldn't have thought to look to see what Iaps was calling her insulin sensitivity right now. Like that's a that's a pretty deep layer of complexity. Most people might not even understand what I just said. But it's just very cool. It has access to that information.
Donald 54:05
Yeah. And it's like, it's so hard to like, I don't know, 10 years ago, I would have never asked, you know, for AI for a website, or an app to be to have the rigor of a computer, you know, where it's always going to consider everything, but then to be flexible enough, like, you know, a chatbot or just, you know, a person to be able to, you know, communicate it simply and just kind of understand what I'm asking it to have been able to have both of those just, it feels too good to be true. Yeah. You know, you use it. And you see it's not
Scott Benner 54:40
it makes me wonder as we're talking which pump company is going to have the foresight that track Justin down and try to get an amen. Yeah, yeah.
Donald 54:49
So maybe maybe it'll be all of them at once.
Scott Benner 54:52
Well, he should lease it to everybody, not just one of them. I would as just spectacular. I'm not surprised by it. Right, like I've been on the side of this, it was hard not to pay attention when they made chat GPT. Public, you know, and you could see its limitations and everything. But you know, you keep hearing over and over again from the people really understand, wait till you see how much more quickly this is going to double over itself. You know, what else did you see that happened recently? That was kind of brilliant. What's the oh, wait, Tesla gave their self driving away for a month to everybody for free? And I thought, Oh, they did that to get more data back? Ah, right. Like they didn't? Yeah, yeah, maybe it's a sales pitch. But they also wanted more people to drive with it so that their computers could crunch more scenarios and come up with ways to make the self driving faster. Data scoop? Yeah. And I thought, Oh, that's really smart. Right? And then all I could wonder is like, How much is it going to improve just from that, then? How much is it going to improve if they, you know, a year from now, like, and that's what I keep thinking about all this? Like, I don't know, if there's a cap to this, I would assume that getting the right answer is the right answer. I don't know how much more better, you know, it's like you can only get so cold, I think you can only do so well, like, you're getting information from somewhere. But all of a sudden, what if you could make it more human or more relatable? Or I even asked Justin I thought I asked him an off the wall question. I said, is there ever a time where someone could ask the podcast the question, and it would respond back in my voice? And he said, That's not out of the question. You could have it to your face, too. It's insane. Like, that's feels insane to people. But the point is, is he's got so much of my voice recorded, that it could approximate my voice. I was like, that's not that I started having like big questions like, do you think my kids will talk to it? When I'm dead?
Donald 56:45
All the existential questions start to drift, then would it be me anyway, I
Scott Benner 56:49
got passed pretty quickly. But like, my point is, is that at some point, these things are going to return back, you know, answers that are, are so good, they're just kind of perfect. And then it's going to become more about speed, and, you know, experience and that kind of stuff. I just I wonder how it's gonna double over itself as
Donald 57:09
well. And it's like, you know, diabetes is such a big problem, it's, you know, I'm sure there's some things that just the problems are crazy hard to solve, you know, like, if you take your, your sixth grade writing assignment, you know, write a two page paper on William Shakespeare, you know, it's already gotten to that, right? Not not like the biggest problem that have to go through, you know, factor in all of these environmental variables about your life and the diabetes that like, you might not even be able to, you know, write down, think of in your head, that's a big problem. So I think having something that's going to double over and kind of almost be hard to imagine is like, just what we need,
Scott Benner 57:52
the next level becomes people knowing how to prompt it like that, that's really going to because Could you ask it for example, like and I don't know, right? I'd have to ask Justin. But like, Could I say to it, you know, my a one C has been 7.5. For the last two years, you see my data? What am I not doing? You only mean like, like, where am I seeing excursions? And how could they be minimized? That'd be amazing. If it just had a look, you know, what if he just started Bolus in your meals like six minutes earlier? Or you know what I mean, like when you see a rise to this, you know, historically, once we get to here, it feels like we didn't cover the meal, well, you probably try putting in more insulin or like those kinds of ideas that peep those are not leaps people would make. So it's going to be about like asking the right questions. I even wondered, like, Could you just say to it, at some point, I'd like to brush up on my skills about diabetes. Can you write a 50 question quiz about type one diabetes, for me, that would help me? And I could do it now. Yeah, it's, I mean, that kind of stuff is all like, it's going to be about the people who teach you how to use the AI. And
Donald 59:00
that's why I was excited, you know, when chat TPT came out, I mean, you would think me being really into tech, I'd be the first person to try it. You know, I still kind of gave it some time for like, the hype cycle to go through because I'm like, Oh, is this gonna be a big thing? You know, right. In the beginning, it wasn't very good. So like, I was admittedly even kind of slowed picking up but once I saw, hey, this is gonna be a thing. You know, open up chat, GPT play around with it, and like, Oh, hey, this is pretty good. And I had the same feeling about vision, where, you know, we're fortunate, it's already helpful and useful. But I want to practice, you know, asking the right questions, kind of seeing what the limitations are and the things that it can bump into. Yeah, yeah, to get those skills up. Now.
Scott Benner 59:44
I'm just I'm with you. I imagine a time I don't know what were in the future. But I imagine a time that you have an app that is, you know, even from a company that you know, a retail app that you can ask questions to about your care about like, I mean, it's a big leap for a company to make, like a pump company would have to get out of their own way a little bit to be willing to do that, where maybe it's going to be a third party app. And you know, it'll just connect to your data. And that keeps the companies out of it. Because there is, you know, I don't know how much people understand, but the FDA doesn't let a pump company give you treatment advice. That's not actually a thing they're allowed to do. It might always have to be a third party situation, but that you just, you know, as long as you can get your data into it, it can make decisions based on it.
Donald 1:00:32
And, you know, it's really cool how, you know, fate has kind of brought us to where we're at where, you know, Nightscout is a really popular open source tool that lets you put all your data in one place. And then you know, you have something like vision that comes along, you don't have to have, you know, months of, you know, the people from Vision trying to muck around and talk to the right company, so that you can pull your data and it's already right there. Yeah. So I just, I just feel like it's so teed up to do what it's doing really well. It's going to work out,
Scott Benner 1:01:06
I can't wait to find out where it goes, I really can't. And I again, like I said earlier on, I'm happy to say it again. You know, if Justin becomes a bazillionaire, I will make some money. But you know, if just two becomes 1000 a year, I'm you know, I mean, am I telling you, I think you should try this? I think it's interesting. And I think you'd be amazed to see it. I can't lie, I think it would be really, it would be a really an eye opening thing for a lot of people. I felt weird about it. Because you know, I do, I haven't connection to them. And I've never really brought somebody on the podcast before to talk about something that like directly benefited me before, like, I mean, but in the end, like you guys know, like, click on the links for the advertisers, the advertisers are happy with me, they buy more ads, like it's, you know, probably not dissimilar, but it just still made me feel uncomfortable. So I appreciate you like letting me blurt that all out at the beginning. Is there anything? I'm not asking you that I should have?
Donald 1:02:00
Yeah, you know, I think I think the last thing that I've kind of picked up from some conversations with Justin, when I on boarded, it's helpful for further folks here. You know, it's really funny, for a long time, I would, I don't know if other people have done this, I'm sure they do. But like, you kind of get this, like, these custom little code that you have when you enter in carbs. So like, for, you know, my food, if, you know, I know, if it's a Greek yogurt, you know, I'll just put like, yolk, you know, or if I had protein shake, I just put, you know, put shake, you know, some like silly things like that. But so whenever I was onboarding with Justin provision, we picked up my nightstand, he's like, Oh, you actually like, enter in, you know, what you ate, you know, you didn't just like, you know, have it where there's like, no icon that you picked or whatever. Oh, yeah. Like, you know, kind of helps me like, look back and know what it is. And he's like, Oh, that, you know, that could be helpful for vision to know what you're eating. And now I'm thinking like, Oh, holy cow, like, I had always kind of thought, you know, I'm giving, you know, I'm kind of being the nerd and making sure that all the data is there. And you know, I'm labeling know what I'm entering and things like that. But it's cool to see that there's finally a use case where all of this information that you throw at it can be useful. Yeah, I think once people try it out, they can see what, what's helpful to have what's not, it was just kind of a reminder for me that, yeah, the more information I'm going to put into this, and, you know, kind of keep all of my stuff curated, the more it's gonna be able to help me out.
Scott Benner 1:03:36
I agree. I've had the same thought, like, you're making all these keystrokes and we're not getting anything out of it. I mean, the algorithm just knows, like, slower digestion. You know what I mean? It's just not exciting enough. I had somebody come on once and talk about Iaps. And we went over that idea of, you know, he used a pizza place as an example, but you know, pizza place a and pizza place B hit your blood sugar differently. Why couldn't your algorithm know when you're a pizza place? A and when you're at pizza place? B?
Donald 1:04:07
Yeah. And, you know, it means little, I think everybody probably has this wish list of things. Like, you know, someone could do this, why aren't they doing it? That's the really cool thing about these large language AI models is that you can just ask it, and see how close you can get to it. You know, if I'm typing in, I'm going to my favorite pizza shop, you know, or you know, look back at my times I've written in pizza shop a pizza shop B and you know, my going high is one of the others or something different I can do that my usually entering like too few carbs for that meal. It's crazy to think about
Scott Benner 1:04:43
Yeah, no, I can't wait. I honestly can't wait to see what happens. So alright. Well, Donald, I can't I can't thank you enough for doing this. Can you I didn't really ask you to tell people but can you give people a tiny bit of background about what you do? You don't have to say where you do it. But what do you do for a living?
Donald 1:04:57
So I guess as we kind of hinted at You know, I'm a software engineer, left technology, I'm currently working at Amazon. And before that I was at Salesforce, also work on a couple things on the side, you know, hopefully get it to
Scott Benner 1:05:12
get away from your overlords at Amazon. Hey,
Donald 1:05:16
you said it, not me.
Scott Benner 1:05:18
It's amazing. What did you do in college? Like, how did you get to this? What would you major in computer
Donald 1:05:22
science? You know, pretty, pretty typical path from from that part
Scott Benner 1:05:27
you just took to it? Or was it always something? Like, I mean, how do you know? I mean, 10 years ago, did you even know what it was you were going to be doing one day when you were studying it? Or is, is today so much different than what you imagined? I guess, is my question.
Donald 1:05:40
You know, I don't think I expected getting into no entrepreneurship and starting my own thing, but I was definitely always, when I was just starting off in high school that I got into it. And you know, just did it for a little bit. I was like, Oh, my gosh, this is really fun. I can just, I can make things, you know, it was a little different than something like, you know, I done some woodshop. And that was fun, because, you know, I like building things. But I'm like, oh, gotta have other materials. I gotta have a shop. But then whenever I was doing software, like, well, pretty much always have a computer available to me. And I can just, you know, type on the keyboard and make something in front of me and share it with everybody. That's definitely what pulled me into it.
Scott Benner 1:06:22
Amazing. All right. Well, I appreciate you doing this very much. I know it's the evening and you probably had a long day already. Can I ask you after we stopped? Can I ask you to hold for one second? I want to ask you another question. Yeah, for sure. Off the recording, though. Okay. Great. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. And
Donald 1:06:38
I had to I have to call out here too, that you know, if people want to check out vision that I have vision.com That's solid prices. 1999 a month, which I think you're just getting a huge bang for your buck for all the stuff you're getting able to do with it. So that was
Scott Benner 1:06:52
like you're not much of a Salesman, Scott. You didn't mention the website. Gotta give a shout out. I have vision.com
Donald 1:06:59
I have vision.com Yep,
Scott Benner 1:07:02
I appreciate it. All right, hold on one second for me.
Want to thank the ever since CGM for sponsoring this episode of The Juicebox Podcast, learn more about its implantable sensor, smart transmitter and terrific mobile application at ever sent cgm.com/juicebox Get the only implantable sensor for longterm where get ever since mark is an incredible example of what so many experience living with diabetes, you show up for yourself and others every day, never letting diabetes to find you. And that is what the Medtronic champion community is all about. Each of us is strong. And together, we're even stronger. To hear more stories from the Medtronic champion community or to share your own story, visit Medtronic diabetes.com/juice box. I'd love to see you in Orlando for the touch by type one event go to touched by type one.org and get yourself some tickets are absolutely free. The events coming up soon. Don't wait. It's filling up. And I'm not just saying that. Hey, everyone, it's me, I just want to be clear again that if you should go to I have vision.com And subscribe, I will get a piece of that money. And if the company should go public one day or be sold and make any kind of income from that I get the tiniest, tiniest little quarter of a percent of the value at the end. So I just want to be completely clear about that. There's no pressure for me for you to go to I have vision.com Please don't feel like that. But if you do, I appreciate it. Sure that Justin appreciates you helping him getting his his business off the ground. No pressure from me. But I do benefit if you spend money at that website. And I want to be a 1,000,000% clear about that. Thank you. If you or a loved one was just diagnosed with type one diabetes, and you're looking for some fresh perspective, the bold beginning series from the Juicebox Podcast is a terrific place to start. That series is with myself and Jenny Smith. Jenny is a CDC es a registered dietitian and a type one for over 35 years. And in the bowl beginning series Jenny and I are going to answer the questions that most people have after a type one diabetes diagnosis. The series begins at episode 698 In your podcast player, or you can go to juicebox podcast.com and click on bold beginnings in the menu. Thank you so much for listening. I'll be back soon with another episode of The Juicebox Podcast. The episode you just heard was professionally edited by wrong way recording. Wrong way recording.com
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