Why Accuracy Matters.
Glucose meter results matter because our lives matter.
Why does accuracy matter to you?
Posts tagged ‘strip safely’
Sep 3
7 Comments
Aug 30
5,000 Names Needed.
There’s a petition circulating to add diabetes as a disease topic to be discussed over the next five years. Diabetes, despite the number of people touched by it, isn’t on the list.
Yet.
If we can gain 5,000 signatures on this petition, we have a better chance of adding diabetes to the discussion docket, helping improve the lives of those we love. It takes about fifteen seconds to sign the petition. Do you have fifteen seconds to spare to help raise the voice of the diabetes community?
Yeah you do.
“The Food and Drug Administration has begun to hold a series of patient meetings to gain a better understanding of specific diseases. Over the next five years, the agency plans to conduct at least 20 such meetings on conditions ranging from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome to Narcolepsy to Irritable Bowel Syndrome.
But not diabetes.
That is unacceptable.
Four “slots” remain open (view the current list), and we want the FDA to add diabetes to its meeting docket for 2013.
According to the American Diabetes Association, nearly 26 million Americans have either type 1 or type 2 diabetes,and an additional 79 million have prediabetes. Those numbers are also increasing each year – the CDC estimates that if current trends continue, one in three US adults will have diabetes by 2050.
No one disputes that diabetes is one of America’s – and the world’s – most serious health epidemics. In 2012, more than one in five total US healthcare dollars was spent on diabetes, totaling $245 billion, and the government covered 62% of those costs, meaning everyone is paying for this epidemic. Despite growing needs, research dollars have also leveled off.
New therapies need to be investigated, tested, and brought to market, and as part of that process, the FDA must understand the daily challenges that patients face.
We need to tell our story to the FDA: about the need for accurate strips, more physiologic insulin, a broader range of drugs, and the Artificial Pancreas.
Our voices need to be heard.
Please sign this petition to urge the FDA to sponsor a patient meeting focused on diabetes – and the sooner, the better.
Thank you very much.”
Aug 26
Diabetes Art Day: Strip Safely Edition.
A long weekend’s worth of test strips for the Diabetes Art Day: Strip Safely edition.
Managing a disease and making medication decisions based on data that’s built on shifting sand is scary.
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Aug 21
Strip Safely: Taking to Twitter.
(Note that the banner looks like a test strip. Clever, eh?)
Wednesdays are usually a diabetes-heavy night on Twitter, since it’s the night that the #DSMA conversation takes place (at 9 pm EST – check out the #DSMA webpage for info, and for tips on joining the conversation, click through to this post on Diabetes and Twitter). Lots of #diabetes and #DOC hashtags happening on Wednesday nights.
So let’s add one more to tonight’s agenda? YES.
The Strip Safely website offers the following details on what’s at stake, and how you can get involved:
“Please Tweet Congressional leadership and your elected officials, letting them know how important it is for their aides to attend the Diabetes Technology Meeting: ‘Verifying the Performance of Blood Glucose Monitors Following FDA Clearance.’
Click the ‘Tweet about Meeting’ link next to a Member’s name to send a tweet asking them to send a staff aide to the September 9 Diabetes Technology Society Meeting. Not sure who your Representative is in the House? Use this link: http://www.house.gov/representatives/find/
All U.S. citizens, regardless of state, should tweet the Senate and House Leaderships.
Then, please, get creative and send additional positive messages to help the diabetes community build friends in Congress. (Include the hash tag #StripSafely.) Feel free to use this link to our letter for your tweets: http://www.stripsafely.com/?page_id=618
Diabetes isn’t partisan about whose life it impacts. We shouldn’t be partisan in seeking support for safe tools to say healthy.”
If you’re living in the United States, tonight is a night to raise awareness, and a ruckus, about how test strip accuracy, and reliability, matter to all people with diabetes. Send your Tweets out between 8 – 9 pm EST, before #dsma. Our elected officials need to know what matters to us, and taking to social media is one way to show them how many of us want – need – to be heard.
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Aug 16
Roulette.
I test my blood sugars between 8 – 15 times per day, depending on trends, travel, exercise, food, and other variables. I correct highs. I treat lows. I make a lot of decisions based on these numbers, and it scares the hell out of me to think that they might not be right.
Food for thought.
