The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved a new continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) system for people with diabetes ages 14 to 75 years. Medtronic is marketing the system as Guardian Connect, the first smart standalone CGM system to help people with diabetes stay ahead of high and low glucose events. The Guardian Connect system empowers people using multiple daily injections (MDI) to more proactively manage their diabetes.
Featuring predictive algorithms in diabetes care, the Guardian Connect system can alert patients of potential high or low glucose events up to 60 minutes in advance. Using Guardian(TM) Sensor 3, the Guardian Connect system was proven in a clinical study to accurately alert patients of 98.5 percent of hypoglycemic events. Care partners can use the system to stay more informed about their loved ones with diabetes as well by tracking glucose in real-time or receiving text alerts.
People using the Guardian Connect system will also have access to the Sugar.IQ(TM) smart diabetes assistant, empowering them to further address the daily challenges of diabetes. With artificial intelligence technology from IBM Watson Health, the Sugar.IQ assistant continually analyzes how an individual’s glucose levels respond to their food intake, insulin dosages, daily routines, and other factors. Together with the Guardian Connect system, the Sugar.IQ assistant can turn difficult-to-determine patterns into personalized, actionable insights that help people with diabetes keep glucose levels in their target range.
“Despite proven benefits and advances in technology, only a minority of insulin-using people with diabetes currently use continuous glucose monitors,” says Timothy Bailey, director of the AMCR Institute and clinical associate professor, University of California, San Diego. “Newer sensors paired with intelligent algorithms that help to both predict and understand glucose excursions, particularly hypoglycemia, will make diabetes safer and more comprehensible for people who inject insulin. Greater utilization of smarter CGM systems promises to allow our patients to achieve more glycemic time-in-range and to further reduce the risk of hypoglycemia.”
“The FDA approval of the Guardian Connect system fills a key gap that exists in diabetes treatment today – how to predict dangerous glucose highs and lows so they can be potentially avoided,” says Annette Brüls, president, Diabetes Service and Solutions at Medtronic. “With predictive alerts and the Sugar.IQ assistant, the Guardian(TM) Connect system enables people to proactively manage their diabetes, so they can focus on living their life, not constantly worrying about their glucose levels.”
The Guardian Connect system will be available in the first quarter of Medtronic’s fiscal year 2019 (May 2018 – July 2018) for people with diabetes who are looking to take on a more proactive role in managing their diabetes.
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