An doctor's perspective on Blip

As a Pediatric Endocrinologist who loves numbers and fine-tuning insulin pump settings for young children, I could not be more excited to see Blip become a reality. I spend most of my time in clinic (The Madison Clinic for Pediatric Diabetes at UCSF) seeing children of all ages who have type 1 diabetes. Most of our patients have a pump and many have a CGM. Every time they come to clinic we upload the data from their devices and print each report on a stack of paper (a tree) and spread them on a desk to review with the parents. I go back and forth from CGM report to pump report and back again to CGM report, trying to temporarily link the food and bolus events in the pump to the changes in blood glucose tracings from the CGM. Throughout this process, I ask the parents “What was dinner on Friday night, 6 days ago?” or “What did you do between 3 and 5pm two Saturdays ago?” As if I remember what I ate for dinner last night! (I always remember breakfast, it's always the same.)

I’ve been doing this for years, but thinking there has to be a better way. Fortunately, the answer was “Yes, there is,” and it’s not that hard, it just takes time and money, but it’s doable. In fact we just did it. Well, Tidepool did it. They called it Blip.

Blip fetches uploaded device data, combines the data from pumps and CGMs, and displays them in intuitive, useful, and actionable formats that we can all understand. In the near future, Blip will get the data directly from each device, using a simple to use universal uploader.

No more trees, no more loads of paper reports, Blip is online and interactive, and I have to say, it looks pretty awesome! My colleague Jenise Wong is doing a pilot study in the Madison Clinic, with a total of a few dozens patients, just to see how will people use Blip and get their feedback so we can make it better. My time spent looking at reports is already cut significantly, which means more time with the patient (I'm happy), or more patients I can see (my boss is happy).

As the French would say: C'est trés cool!

Saleh Adi