I finally bit the bullet and am trying a different meter — Lifescan’s UltraSmart. My PBM (Medco), doesn’t have Freestyle on the formulary, although I really like that meter. It’s a difference of over $100 a year on the copay, so I’m giving the UltraSmart a try.
I really think I’ll go for it, as it J&M who owns LifeScan is buying Animas, meaning that there will a tighter pairing between the products. I’m quite sure one of the next upgrades of the Animas pump is going to be talking to the meter, as that is the only thing the competitors do that the Animas doesn’t. The only thing holding that back is that the Ultra line connects with a serial port, not IR. However, Lifescan just went through a preMarket approval (501K) on a new Ultra meter, so that might be coming up.
The biggest negative on the ultrasmart is the size, the biggest positive is the log on the meter. I really like the idea of seeing the trends on a portable graph, which you don’t get from EzManager. You get graphs on the PC side, but not on the PDA side. I tend to want to make adjustments on the fly, probably not a good thing, and being able to see what is going on while it is happening, rather than waiting until I get to the big computer is desirable.
I’ve had some trouble using their test strips. The samples I used worked fine, but when I opened a new bottle this morning, I had 3 bad readings in a row, while I was at school and couldn’t get a good reading. So I picked up the phone and called Lifescan in front of my students (I think hearing someone deal with tech support is a good thing, and they were doing an assignment). Of course, they had to talk loudly when I was on the phone … Anyhow, I was not impressed. I accidently dialed the Spanish line instead of the English but it still should not take 6 minutes to get to a person on Wednesday morning. I find it irritating to have to listen to a survey request before I get tech support, and in fact, I told their system to shut up and answer the phone more than once.
After the tech walked me through the procedure, I didn’t have another problem, though I find holding the stupid meter on the blood drop during the countdown to be extremely annoying.
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