Paving it forward with Victor Garber

Award-winning actor Victor Garber has lived with type 1 diabetes for close to 60 years. He shares his experience with DIY Loop, his vision for the future of diabetes technology, and his hope that together, we can pave it forward. Partner with us on this journey and visit https://www.tidepool.org/paveitforward today.

This transcript has been edited for clarity.I think what people don’t understand about living with type 1 diabetes is how seriousit is and how hard it can be. I was diagnosed in 1962 when I was just twelve.

Throughout my career, whether I’ve been on stage or on camera, I’ve had to figure out howto balance all of the things that impact diabetes. My schedule, my insulin, my activity, what I eat, when I eat. And I’ve had to do that mostly on my own.

I’m not really a tech guy, and my talents lie in other directions.

But I’ve discovered a tool that has changed my perspective on technology, and my lifewith diabetes. It’s a smartphone app called Loop.

Loop started as a do-it-yourself effort by a group of people who said “we are not waiting for something better”. Their goal was to build an app that could connect to your other devices, take in information about your glucose numbers, and adjust the amount of insulin you receive.

Loop is an app that I use with my insulin pump and continuous glucose monitor that haschanged the way I manage type 1 diabetes. The hardest part is that it’s not currently available in the App Store, so I had to find someone to get the code off the internet and build it specifically for me.

The idea of downloading code in order to manage my diabetes? That’s something I never imagined.

After a successful year using Loop, I was shooting a series in Vancouver when the app was accidentally deleted from my phone. As I’m incapable of dealing with technical problems, I had to find help again! And I thought, wouldn’t this be much easier if I could just download it directly from the App Store?

Not long ago, I learned about Tidepool — a nonprofit that connects diabetes devices, companies, and communities through their software. Tidepool has a vision of making Loop more accessible to a wider audience. Tidepool volunteered to champion Loop through the FDA with the goal of making it available in the App Store for anyone with a prescription. And now, they’re almost to the finish line.

Tidepool is carving a new path for patient-led innovation that no one has charted before. It takes courage and conviction to take this road. And it takes the support of people like you and me to help #PaveItForward.

I hope you’ll join me in supporting Tidepool’s vision.