With growing population of diabetic patients, diabetes management is becoming a daunting activity. Sugar level management and insulin injections tracking is a difficult work. Thus, leading pharmaceutical companies are collaborating with medical device companies to find an easy solution for diabetes management for patients.       

Medtronic plc, the largest medical equipment company in the world headquartered in Dublin, Ireland, reportedly announced its collaboration with Danish pharmaceutical giant, Novo Nordisk, for easier diabetes management through the integration of vital health technologies.

The collaboration intends to create solutions that would integrate insulin dosing data from future smart insulin pens of Novo Nordisk into the Continuous Glucose Monitoring devices (CGM) of Medtronic, like the Guardian™ Connect system.

Guardian Connect is a CGM system which sends predictive alerts around 60 minutes prior to the drop of blood sugar level.

Novo Nordisk is preparing to roll out its smart insulin pens, NovoPen Echo Plus and NovoPen 6, and also a disposable and pre-filled injection solution by 2020.

The insulin pens would be compatible with iOS as well as Android devices, and Guardian Connect system of Medtronic will be updated to combine data from these smart insulin pens.

The new integration approach would let caregivers, people with diabetes and healthcare professionals track insulin dosing and blood glucose levels automatically, making the entire process easier for all people involved, especially for people having that condition.

Executive Vice President of Commercial Strategy & Corporate Affairs at Novo Nordisk, Camilla Sylvest stated that millions of people diagnosed with diabetes work hard to manage their sugar level and track their insulin injections each day. To help ease the difficulty of diabetes management, the company is thrilled to be collaborating with Medtronic, the world’s biggest medical equipment company.

Sylvest added that the company will now partner with every major CGM device producer, which means the company can bring the benefits of smart pens to greater number of people.

It is expected that this integration will save time of people suffering from diabetes each day and will also increase the time these people will spend with a normal blood glucose level.

Source credit: https://www.diabetes.co.uk/news/2019/sep/medtronic-and-novo-nordisk-announce-major-diabetes-collaboration-94098877.html