Medtronic Diabetes Advocate Forum

This past weekend I had the opportunity to attend the Medtronic Diabetes Advocate Forum. I have been to a couple other industry / pharmacy events in the past, but this was my first Medtronic event. My initial thought when I was invited to this is that it was called an Advocate forum and not a social media summit or meetup which led me to believe that there was going to be more than just social related topics, which is what I was hoping for. Luckily, there was a mix of on and off line action items.

I used the phrase action items because that’s exactly what came out of this entire trip. I walked away with a pretty lengthy to do list as opposed to a long “I want to do” list. This community is strong and helps each other out, so I’m sure I’m not just speaking for myself but there will be plenty of calls for help from those that attended.

There were a lot of items discussed over a short period of time and I want to provide as much info on each of those topics as I can, so I will be breaking down each area of interest into its own posts. I feel that as an invited attended, it is my responsibility to provide you with as much information as possible for those that were not able to attend. The topics of a few upcoming posts will be on :

• Artificial Pancreas – Naming, closing the loop, system, moving forward
• Spare a Rose
• Strip Safely
• Regulatory and Policy Changes
• Customer service, feedback, making changes
• Redundancy Sensors
• And more..

My overall feeling at the end of this forum was that I thought it was fulfilling. I had a discussion with Bennet as we were printing out boarding passes and mentioned that out of the several of these events that I have attended, this is the first time that I am leaving with an actual agenda and action items and not thinking, “I hope we follow through on some of these things” and more of a feeling that we already have action items to handle from this meeting.

As I mentioned, this post is more of a brief outline of the posts to come because I feel that there is enough material discussed to go into more detail about the items listed above.

If you have any questions, please leave a comment and I will get a Medtronic answer for you if I can’t answer myself.