Last fall, Sigi pump received Breakthrough Device Designation from the US FDA. Although it's still a long way from being released, Sigi is very intriguing; it uses some of the best parts of existing pump systems.
Pim Von Wesel is Co-CEO of AMF Medical, the company that makes the Sigi Pump. We’ll talk about what makes this system unique, which partners they're eying for collaboration and the timeline for submitting to the FDA really looks like.
This podcast is not intended as medical advice. If you have those kinds of questions, please contact your health care provider.
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Episode Transcription Below (or coming soon!)
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Stacey Simms 0:00
Diabetes Connections is brought to you by Dexcom. Take control of your diabetes and live life to the fullest with Dexcom and by Club 1921, where Diabetes Connections are made.
This is Diabetes Connections with Stacey Simms.
This week, it's called Sigi pump. And last fall it received breakthrough device designation from the US FDA, there's still a long way to go before this tubeless rechargeable pump could be on the market. And company leaders say that's okay by them.
Pim van Wesel 0:37
We're biding our time to make it short is excellent in every respect, technically, from a usability point of view, of course, which has a huge focus to us lowering therapy burden, and also just being able to produce it in sufficient quantities.
Stacey Simms 0:51
Pim van Wesel is Co-CEO of AMF Medical, the company that makes the Sigi pump, we'll talk about what makes this system unique, which partners they're eyeing for collaboration, and what the timeline for submitting to the FDA really looks like,
This podcast is not intended as medical advice. If you have those kinds of questions, please contact your health care provider.
Welcome to another week of the show, always so glad to have you here. You know, we aim to educate and inspire about diabetes with a focus on people who use insulin. Before we jump in, I want to give a big shout out to the amazing people in our Facebook group. If you're not there, it's Diabetes Connections, the group and I just want to single them out, because I think that it is the smartest diabetes Facebook group that's out there. I know I'm a little biased. But you know, it's not the kind of group that's going to tell you how to eat or how to dose or you must do this, or how dare you do that. As you know, if you listen to the show, that's not our deal at all. And I just want to take a moment because I've been asking the folks in there many of whom have lived with diabetes for 50, 60 years, many of whom work for technology companies, many of whom have been blogging about diabetes for many, many years. And I've been bringing them questions that have come up in my local group, things like cannula length, making a difference, some questions I had about summer camps for this year. And they all also have fabulous conversations. So I know we're all if you're on Facebook, you're in a ton of groups already. I do think that it's a really good one. If you'd like to hear from people who have lived with this condition for a long time who are very knowledgeable and frankly, very opinionated, which I like a lot. I do run a very tight ship. I do this in my local group as well as this one, you're not going to get away with any nonsense. Any weird stuff, a snake oil. Yeah, we will have none of them. But it's a great group. And I just was given them a shout out because they've been very, very helpful, especially lately.
Okay. Sigi pump caught my attention when it received that breakthrough designation that I mentioned. And to be clear, that means the FDA will try to speed it through the process. It does not mean it's approved for that it's guaranteed approval. And Sigi by the way is S-i-g-i. I did share some photos of it in the Facebook group. And my guest is Pim van Wesel , the CO CEO of AMF medical, that is the Swiss company behind Sigi pump. They are very early on here. Clinical trials have not yet started, but they do plan that when they get through the process to launch in the US first while it looks a bit like an omnipod, but the pod part is reusable. You recharge it as needed, and they give you two so you don't have to stop pumping while you're recharging. One of them. The only disposable part is the infusion set, although they call it something else, the part that connects to the body. Lots more information about Sigi in my interview with Pim van Wesel
Pim thanks for joining me. I am excited to find out more about this product in this company. Thanks for coming on the show.
Pim van Wesel 3:54
Thanks for having me. Stacey. Very excited to share what we have.
Stacey Simms 3:57
Yeah, I have so many questions for you. But let me just start by asking, just tell you a little bit about the company that makes Sigi what is A M F medical? What do you all do?
Pim van Wesel 4:08
Well, AMF medical was really spun out as a standalone company in 2021. But the history of the company goes back to 2014 when the founders hit upon a technology which they initially started using in some high end components for laboratory equipment. But a number of the founders had a history from a previous startup in insulin delivery. It didn't work so well then. But when they analyze this particular technology, they said, Wait a minute, we can probably make a insulin pump with this technology that would work that would not destroy insulin and being a large, fragile hormone. And they started a project in 2015. Over time, the project got big enough that they decided what we decided I joined since then to make it a separate company just because the investment story is very big. Different for insulin technology versus, you know, high end led components. So, company started in 2014, on off separately in 2021. Around the time we kind of came out of stealth. And, you know, I joined a little over a year ago, basically to help build a business after the founders started with a technology hired a great r&d leader pair who turn it into a product and then meet to help make it a business.
Stacey Simms 5:27
Or you mentioned coming out of stealth mode. The first time I heard about this was when the US FDA gave what they call breakthrough device designation. What does that mean? And why is that important?
Pim van Wesel 5:40
Well, it's important to us because we feel we have a few capabilities, particularly around usability and lowering the therapy burden that we wanted to test with the FDA, if it deserves to some recognition. Practically, it means that that puts us a little bit earlier and faster into the approval process. But we have an ongoing conversation with the FDA that started with a pre submission conversation there. And we decided to that we would try for this designation to get some recognition for some of the capabilities that we have, they picked up on a number of them, which got everybody very excited. You know, in a way, it's, you know, recognition that we're addressing unmet patient's needs.
Stacey Simms 6:18
Okay, so I got a little bit ahead of myself there by starting by asking about the FDA, let's just back up and talk about what the product is. Tell me about the Sigi pump. What makes this different,
Pim van Wesel 6:28
it is a patch pump, we have designed it for interoperability with multiple systems, so multiple third party glucose monitors and multiple algorithms. And I think one of the novelties that we'd like to bring is just tremendous ease of use. So we use standard prefilled insulin cartridges, I think that's in a nutshell, the product, it is a semi reusable product, the pump itself is reusable, you would have to as a user, with a dedicated charger, and whenever you need to switch it out. Because your cartridge is empty, you take your second pump, pump, pump into cartridge, use a new sterile cap to close it and then put it back onto your pad. The pad is a or tray, but we call it a pad is basically placed on your skin. And you can clip your palm on and off as needed.
Stacey Simms 7:17
I'm going to describe this probably pretty poorly. But in my mind's eye using existing technology, this seems to me like you use sort of a pump infusion set. So you would insert the tray the base as you called it onto the skin. And then that's temporary, right, you would take that off every couple of days like you do right now. But the patch pump is more like a more durable pump like a Medtronic or a Tandem, but you physically clip it flat, it connects to that infusion, well, I'm calling an infusion set. And is that close to accurate?
Pim van Wesel 7:52
That is I think that is a very good description with the one caveat that we have the ambition for the pads to last a little bit longer than a couple of days. Which basically means that once the pad is on the skin, let's just say for a moment that it lasts a week, as you run out of insulin you your take your pump off, you put in a new cartridge, and you clip your pump back on as long as the pad lasts, or what you could imagine somebody who has a very high use in need of insulin, they might for instance less in people that are in type two, not that that's our primary focus. But if they were to go through 160 units in less than two days, they wouldn't have to change the insertion of the pad or to disposable if you will. So that's the idea. Absolutely.
Stacey Simms 8:38
Got it. We're going to talk about more features, and you know a lot more about what the system is about. But before we go any further is what we're talking about in existence yet. In other words, is somebody wearing this? Is this in clinical trials? Where are you in the process?
Pim van Wesel 8:53
So we have functioning prototypes? We have not, and we've tested the usability of those we published something at ATDD last year. And we'll we'll have some more information at ATDD coming up in March sort of product exists. But formally speaking, we have not done the first human yet and as planned for later this year towards the end of 2022.
Stacey Simms 9:16
Got it? Well, the next question I know my listeners are going to have is can they take part in that are those are those first people in Europe or in the United States?
Pim van Wesel 9:24
There? I'll be very honest W in Europe. And that is primarily just to you know, we're startups. So we're trying to keep it manageable and coordination effort. So to do this in the US is probably a little bit beyond what we can can do at the moment. But clearly, I mean, just to answer the following question. Our intent is to first go in marketing United States and that's why we have these conversations with the FDA.
Stacey Simms 9:48
Got it. Got it. Well, we have lots of listeners in Europe too. So we'll put all the information out is as you're able to send to us. Alright, so let's talk a little bit more about the product itself, or the system itself, I should say the public Um, you mentioned you know, refilling insulin, this is prefilled pump cartridges as designed, right? This is not, you don't have to draw it out and fill it correct.
Pim van Wesel 10:09
There's no, if the term here fiddling to fill it, you basically take it out of the, you know, insulin caps in the refrigerator, and you pop it in straightaway you you don't have to wait 20 minutes for it to warm up, the system is compensating for that. So there's no air bubbles. And these cartridges, they already exist, they're already on the market. They're just being used today, with, you know, the Tethered pumps, or, you know, the pumps you were in a belt or in a pocket. So, you you mentioned the Medtronic pumps. Actually, there's other products out there that use this exact same existing cartridge. And I think you've spoken about some of these pumps in other podcasts.
Stacey Simms 10:46
Yeah, it's interesting. You know, we're so US centric sometimes that I certainly tend to forget, I believe what, Ypsomed uses the cartridges?
Pim van Wesel 10:54
Yes, Ypsomed uses that cartridge here in Europe And they have their agreement with Lily in United States. And there's a Roche product as well that uses this. But to our knowledge, this is the only patch pump that's designed around this cartridge. And it's actually a big part of why the pump has the size that it has, we couldn't make it much smaller and, and still fit the cartridge in
Stacey Simms 11:16
tiny a little bit more about the pump design itself. As I'm reading through, it looks like it is controlled from a phone or controlled by a separate controller. Are there any buttons on the pump itself,
Pim van Wesel 11:27
there are no buttons on the pump itself. And it is operated via your own smartphone. That's definitely the ID that we're working towards. We don't think people need another personal device manager in their pocket. So keep it simple.
Stacey Simms 11:40
And now I've talked about system a few times. Let's talk about that. So Bluetooth unable to go to a smartphone to go to an AI Controller talk about that a little bit.
Pim van Wesel 11:49
It is in no technical parlance. It's it's designed in the discussions with FDA RS ultimate controller enabled pumps. So nice pump, and it has everything that you could, you know design to so we're not trying to backwards integrate an algorithm and interoperability with third party CGM is designed to be able to do that. And when we say designed to be able to do that it has the communication capabilities with Bluetooth, it has the processing power to have an algorithm on board, and it has the battery life to deal with it as well. It's a rechargeable battery, of course, all of that is designed to be able to communicate and to calculate in, you know, work with dosing algorithms, if you will, that would be onboard. There's some systems that have the dosing algorithm on a personal device manager or in the future on the phone. We can accommodate that as well. We think that there's some advantages to having the algorithm actually embedded on the pump. And we've designed it to be able to do that.
Stacey Simms 12:46
I may have missed this point. You're not creating an algorithm for the pump?
Pim van Wesel 12:52
No, I think when we initially I think the ambitions were for the company were quite large. But if we really look at the core competencies, the core capabilities that his team has is around fluidics management and is around miniaturization. So over time, we also realized that, you know, we should better stick to what we do well, and is just make an excellent pump a truly excellent pump. Otherwise, we don't think we have any right to be on the market. And we have this open ID, you know, collaborating with, as far as we're concerned with any algorithm that's approved with any CGM, that is that is available. So we really have an open protocol or an open system mindset there. I think that's a little bit. You know, if we read the documentation, what the what the FDA is doing with the creation of these new product categories, such as ace pump, an IC, GM and I control, or we read a little bit with the JDRF has as a position statement around your artificial pancreas. We're fully subscribed to that philosophy, because we're open. Yeah,
Stacey Simms 13:59
it's really interesting, because ideally, and we've been talking with this for a couple of years now ideally, right, you'd get your pump, you get your CGM, you'd be able to pick and choose and then say, Okay, I want this algorithm I you know, I want my, I mean, I'll put the blue sky thing I want to Sigi I want my libre, and I want to use the control IQ. Correct? Is that something you think is a real possibility here?
Right back to Pim in just a moment, but first Diabetes Connections is brought to you by Dexcom. And we've been using the Dexcom system since Benny was nine years old. We started with them back in December of 2013. The system just keeps getting better. The Dexcom G6 is FDA permitted for no finger sticks for calibration and diabetes treatment decisions you can share with up to 10 people from your smart device. The G6 has 10 Day sensor wear and the applicator is so easy. I have not done one insertion since we got it. Benny does them all himself. He's a busy kid, and no way he can just take a quick glance at his blood glucose numbers to make better treatment decisions. is reassuring. Of course, we still love the alerts and alarms and that we can set them how we want it for glucose alerts and readings and the G six do not match symptoms or expectations use a blood glucose meter to make diabetes treatment decisions. To learn more, go to diabetes connections.com and click on the Dexcom logo.
Now back to Pim talking about interoperability and whether the system will work with other algorithms and devices.
Pim van Wesel 15:27
Well, we're definitely building our product for that to work, and depends a lot, of course, on the collaboration that that you can put in place with some of his companies. And being a startup, you know, a number of these collaborations are actually, you know, very enthusiastic, and other ones are a little bit more and wait and see, because we're still startup at this point in time. And I understand some of the bigger CGM companies, they might say like, well, let's wait and see if these guys actually gonna make it to market before we spend an awful lot of time co developing with them. But a number of areas septic, and we have good conversation. So will it work with all depends? You know, I don't think it's so much a technical question as a question of, you know, is there the will to make it happen. But we're very encouraged by some of the collaborations that that have been put in place, still early days, but we plan to do our first human and fairly soon thereafter have a what we call a hybrid loop trial with with a select number of patients.
Stacey Simms 16:26
Not to belabor the point here, it would be too early to ask you which CGM you would work with because you're, you're still
Pim van Wesel 16:33
Well, let me turned the question around. Which CGM? Would you first like to see on our pump?
Stacey Simms 16:39
I would. But I first like to say, good question here in the US, right, we only have a Dexcom and Libre, and Medtronic, I'd left them out of that, because they're so proprietary, you know, they only work within their system. So you know, if you ask me, I'm going to say Dexcom? Because that's what we use. But I would also say, I mean, I'll speak out of both sides of my mouth, everybody.
Unknown Speaker 17:03
So
Stacey Simms 17:07
in the works, probably two of which will come to market?
Pim van Wesel 17:09
Well, yeah, it's interesting that you mentioned that, Stacy, because the other day, with, you know, we basically had an inventory of the number of CGM projects out there. And I think it was getting to about close to 40. If you kind of all add them up, and we don't have 40 agreements in place, we have some agreements in place, and when I can talk about it, because there's confidentiality there, but you probably won't be disappointed with some of the names that we're talking about. But to your earlier point, you know, there's different form factors, right. Some people are very comfortable with having, you know, every six months or every 12 months, a minor intervention, not to have, you know, not as a wearable other people are actually, you know, preferring a wearable. And I think we want to accommodate that, as you said, different form factors, different dosing algorithms. So that that's our philosophy. And we're sticking to that for an hour and see how much of that we can make happen. But clearly, when we make our selection the same way these big companies do it, right. They say, I'm not going to work with this startup, well, how much do I believe they actually going to exist five years from now? Those same considerations apply to us as well? Yes, we have some conversation with early startups. But if you want to be successful, we'll probably have to partner with one or two of the bigger ones first, just being very pragmatic. And that's what we're doing.
Stacey Simms 18:28
And I left out one apologies to ever since the folks at Sensionics , who I'm sure you're very well familiar with, but I did not mention them as the US CGM company are available here. And they certainly are. I'm always gonna say work with everybody. It's so interesting to think about how it's changed in the last Gosh, even the last five
Pim van Wesel 18:45
years now. Right. But that's despite debts. It's going so fast. We think there's really just only only one really successful patch pump on the market. And we think we have something to offer in that space where we're at. And we're focused on that.
Stacey Simms 19:00
Is it waterproof? Yep. The fast answer. That's easy.
Pim van Wesel 19:05
No, I think, do the way we think about hedge pumps and look, and I've worked at some of the larger companies that have projects or had projects or have projects in the works on it. There have been so many attempts, I think, and there have been so many bridges burned in that space that are we get a lot of pressure from investors and from, you know, people that pick up with us on the websites to go fast and our philosophy and less our product is excellent. We don't have the right to be on the market. And we're biding our time to make sure it's excellent in every respect, technically, from a usability point of view, of course, which has a huge focus to us lowering therapy burden, and also just being able to produce it in sufficient quantities. It's a high hurdle. We don't want to come out unless we're absolutely excellent. And I'll tell you the story what what I discussed with our r&d people. I said look, we'll go to market when we are confident that we can Then pick a handful of influencers in diabetes technology world, and we'll give them flutter for three months. And we say, do what you want, write whatever you want. If we're totally comfortable doing that, then we're ready to go to market.
Stacey Simms 20:13
I had a question from a couple of listeners. And you've answered this a little bit about the differences between Sigi and the Omni pod, which is, you know, pretty much the closest to something like that, that we already have right here. And you've mentioned things that it's, you know, it's smaller, it's lighter, it is rechargeable, so you're not throwing the pump itself away. Are there other differences you'd like to point out?
Pim van Wesel 20:34
Well, I think the other one you pointed out as well, and that we we put a lot of effort in is the fact that it uses a prefilled cartridge, then this is designed upfront for interoperability, and we'll think we'll be very open. But I think you hit on most of them. Plus, of course, the fact that we use this prefilled cartridge, which we think is also looking at, you know, the feedback that we're getting on the website. There's there's an encouraging number of Omnipod users who've picked up on our website and are sending us comments. So we'll keep working at it. From that perspective.
Stacey Simms 21:05
I'm curious, we I've been talking a lot in the last couple of weeks on the show about infusion sets. You know, we had the folks from convatec on talking about the different types that they're looking to make you already mentioned, hopefully longer. Where can you talk a little bit about that part of this system, I know you can't, you know, there's a lot of proprietary and I'm sure information you can't share. But just in terms of he would seems to be that it would be a different type of insertion, just because it to me and it could be wrong, it seems like it might be have to be bigger, I'll let you talk about it.
Pim van Wesel 21:33
Let's talk about the insertion is designed to be very fast and fast in this respect often means, you know, limited, limited pain, right? If you do it very quickly. That's number one, or insertion is intended to be very quiet, particularly with very young patients in mind, this should not be a scary experience. So that's the insertion the cannula itself, we have a number of ideas around it to make it 470. Where and of course, because the pump, and isn't just the the setup itself, but the pump itself is very, very lightweight, we aim to make it you know, very wearable from that perspective, as well. We are doing a number of tests around you, we've done some testing or the wearability, and we've made some changes to the adhesive. And that's, you know, continues to be a big focus, just trying to work with the best adhesive companies out there. And in terms of the cannula, we are doing some tests around making sure that that you know, we don't have clogging and that we actually can get to seven days without, you know, too much inconvenience. Putting for sale is a pretty high hurdle there for seven day use and need to see if we can get there that's still already work. But I do wonder what are the thing I will say compared to some other pumps is we have no tubing at all right? So the the fluid path, if you will, from the cartridge to the skin of the user is actually very, very short. And that of course has the advantage as well, which other patch pumps have as well, not all of them, but some for sure is that it has very little incident wastage involved, of course, we really aim to completely empty the cartridge.
Stacey Simms 23:12
Are you making the infusion set or the connector? Are you all making that yourselves?
Pim van Wesel 23:17
Yeah, we make everything ourselves except the insulin cartridges which are available, but we are doing everything ourselves. We have from our micro fluidics technology background, we have a lot of information on what works. And we've done extensive insulin compatibility testing with insulins that we believe will be available in this cartridge just so we have the data, which is very encouraging that, you know, it lasts and that doesn't create any you know, material interaction issues. For instance,
Stacey Simms 23:45
I mentioned at the beginning of our chat here that you are relatively new to the company. And you also talked about you're already getting input, I'm sure criticism, comments from the diabetes community from the website. What were you doing before this? And what has it been like to move into the diabetes space where well are very, very passionate?
Pim van Wesel 24:06
Absolutely. It's, I've been with the company formally for about a year, I've, you know, been helping the management team, the executive team and the board a little bit before that. I have a longer experience in diabetes. I worked for about five years in diabetes with Medtronic and Europe. So this is not my my first rodeo. It is a very engaged community and very passionate and very vocal. I've also worked in incontinence and I can tell you that the people who have incontinence problems are a lot less vocal than people living with diabetes for sure. And people stay around right. It's been very encouraging to to reconnect with some of the experts, the clinical experts I had the privilege of working with in the past and they're still around and you're still advising and they're still happy to have a discussion and give very solid input. So quite a bit of experience with diabetes been in medical technology for since 2003. if you will, so coming up to almost 20 years, but I must say that working in diabetes is in the diabetes technology field is particularly gratifying you, you're actually much closer to what's happening than in many other areas of medical technology. So it's been good. It's been good to be back. Absolutely.
Stacey Simms 25:17
That's great. Yeah. And then the past few years, as well, there's been this push from the pump is, you know, this clunky medical device to realizing that people, you know, it's such a part of the day to day life of someone with diabetes, and our phones look great, Why can't our pumps look great. And I'm assuming that that is part of the design here to this is kind of silly to ask, but I did get this question. And I like silly. Is there any planning here to make it different colors to have any designs on it, things like that,
Pim van Wesel 25:48
let me Well, a couple of things. Colors is not the high priority, we have a project extension matrix and colors is actually on there. We think it's a fairly low efforts, we're just questioning in terms of user benefits, if there's not other things we need to focus on first.
Stacey Simms 26:06
And also getting it to market probably is the top priority,
Pim van Wesel 26:08
for sure. But you know, when you talk to two people in the diabetes investment community, they want to see some ideas of what else you can think about for the future. And we have a number of ideas in this. But particularly for young, young users and pediatric patients, for instance, we know these things are important to my, in my former life, I've spent a lot of time coming up with cool stickers that worked on a pump, if you will. But we were already worked very hard on the design. If I show you one day, the first prototypes, they looked very different and quite a bit bigger. And we're very fortunate to work with an excellent design company around some of these four factors, things, I didn't fully appreciate that necessarily when I started. But for instance, the applicator has gone through numerous separations, iterations to allow for single hand application at all different body parts so that the angle still works. And one of our investors, you know, said, Oh, I get it. And I'm not sure if this analogy resonates in the United States. I think it does. But one of the investors said, Wait a minute, you're like the Nespresso, of insulin therapy. And I don't know, if you, you know, if you made an espresso in the old fashioned way, you had to get the amount of coffee, right, you had to get the pressure, right, you had to get the temperature, right. It's quite involved, right, and espresso comes around, and kind of makes it, you know, standard and repeatable and very, very easy to use, come and take a little bit further, it's so happens that the design company that we've worked with, on route a form factor, not that technology run the form factor, actually happens to be the same company that designs the Nespresso machines. They liked our project very much. And I wouldn't say they're doing it for free, but I think we're getting a better rate. And then this person is,
Stacey Simms 27:55
you know, a friend of mine makes a t shirt that says I run on coffee and insulin will have to send them one of
Pim van Wesel 28:00
those. Absolutely. And I'll share it with my espresso friends as well.
Stacey Simms 28:05
Hey, I meant to ask you earlier, and this is a question I got from a listener, you have mentioned, you know, we've talked several times about the prefilled insulin cartridges, do you anticipate a certain type of insulin? Will it work with most of the types that are out right now,
Pim van Wesel 28:19
we have tested it for insulin compatibility with for insulins today, we've tested it with Nova rapid, we've tested with fierce, we've tested with Lumia F, and we've tested with Humalog. And we think that we that we cover a very significant portion of the US market, because there are some, you know, various there is a sell Fill option as well for this product, although that's probably not the benefit that we you know, we we kind of put forward that much but we're very interested in working with with multiple intell insolence, particularly if they could be available in in prefilled insulin cartridges. And we have some ideas are as well, particularly for for type two, to work with higher concentrated insolence. And we have some discussions around well, could the pump identify which type of insulin you're actually putting in your pump? You don't want to confuse you 200 or higher. Right? Right, you 100 Of course, the further discussion around that. And this may be a little bit too far ahead. And you know is well wait a minute, you have different types of insulins, our future algorithms going to take different types of insulin rapid, ultra rapid and to take take into account in their calculations. And how could we ccommodate that the some of the discussions we're having with insulin manufacturers around Okay, would you pump be able to tell which insulin type you have actually just loaded your pump with snakes. Interesting.
Stacey Simms 29:50
Yeah. Yeah. It's very interesting to think about that. My goodness. I was just thinking like, could you use Humalog, Novolog? The four you mentioned, I guess Apidra would be the only one I would have a question about but it just doesn't sound like you've tested it.
Pim van Wesel 30:00
You know, we've not tested it yet. And there's no other reason than that. We know that the insolence I just mentioned, they might be available in the cartridge form factor, or Nofal. Rapids. And, and fill us with, that's public information that they're available in pump cart. And we've all learned about the lily project with Ypsomed, and we kind of figure that they will use a similar cartridge, we don't think that it's going to be very different form factor wise. So that's why we focused on those four,
Stacey Simms 30:33
we've already started looking probably further ahead than we should with something like this. But you mentioned the next time there may be more information will be in in March, and then more trials on people starting later this year. Do I have that correct. Anything else that you want to add that's happening in the near future?
Pim van Wesel 30:50
Will will hopefully well, one feature that we haven't discussed and which we are exploring very actively, and we announced this last HDD is that we have very fast Ultra very fast occlusion detection. And we have now independent data, which will hopefully see published at attd, about comparison to comparative data, how fast our occlusion detection is, and we're exploring what are some of the benefits of that, of course, we tried to balance it against alarm fatigue, of course, we don't want everything to become, you know, an alarm and basically drives people crazy. But we think there's some real benefits to having very faster collision detection, particularly if you go to very young patients. And I think we're seeing more and more people with diabetes getting diagnosed earlier and earlier. And here in Europe, at least, they almost instantaneously go on a pump. And then we think we want to accommodate that. So that's going to be some clinical work we need to do, how do we how do we position the ability to, you know, very, very quickly, we're talking minutes, not hours, right? If you have a very low basal rate, you might not see an alarm in days. And we're actually minutes in that respect and that support very encouraging that we, we still need to think about. So maybe that's one feature we haven't talked about, and we're gonna do some clinical work around.
Stacey Simms 32:09
Interesting. Well, thank you so much for joining me. I look forward to learning more. I appreciate you starting the conversation. Tell your folks when they send those pumps for people to try. Certainly espresso machine. We all love espresso, they can handle that. Very good.
Pim van Wesel 32:23
I like the idea. Well, I wanted to thank you Stacey for the opportunity. And we're always available to answer questions.
Stacey Simms 32:29
Fabulous. We'll talk soon. Thank you so much.
You're listening to Diabetes Connections with Stacey Simms.
Lots more information about Sigi at diabetes connections.com. Every episode has its own homepage with a transcription and more information. If you go there, and the transcription isn't there. And it's an episode after January of 2020. It's coming. It just may take a couple of days to get it posted. But I promise it's there. And we are working our way backwards through the other episodes since we started the show in June of 2015.
I did want to add one thing I forgot to ask during the interview and I asked it later, why the heck is it named Sigi. I emailed them after the interview. And they told me that they came up with the name through an internal naming competition. The chairman of the co founder proposed it kind of a little tongue in cheek was tribute to one of his fellow co founders, an older gentleman, he is 84 years old now. And he was at the origin of what they call the system's core a microfluidic pumping technology idea. His name is Siegfried Strassler and Sigi is his nickname. They said everybody liked it. Also, because I love this it evokes a certain friendly, reliable swiftness. And so it was voted. So that's why it's called Sigi. I love names, I just love to find out why these things are called what they are. I mean, sometimes it's just a number like Omnipod. Five is the next one, Dash was number four and back from there, they're keeping it simple. I liked horizon. I like with control IQ. I hope that they keep names like that. So we don't have to just remember numbers, it makes it easier and it gives a little bit more personality. So thanks for the definition of Sigi and congratulation to Mr. Sigi Sigfrid strassler. Although I guess if it's his nickname, I would not call him Mr. Sigi. I'm calling him Mr. Sigi.
Anyway, we will keep you posted on how the Sigi system moves through the pipeline. And of course, I'm following closely on technology and hoping that we're getting more approvals and more movement for the US FDA for stuff that's already in front of them and that is in the pipeline.
What's coming up. I will say that if you are interested in sending your child to diabetes camp, jump on that most of the camps have opened registration, they usually do that in mid February or by mid February. So chances are if you've got a local camp near you or you want to send your kid to a camp that's not local. Go ahead, look that up. I actually thought I remember when Betty was diagnosed because campus such a big part of our lives as the kids got older, I was thinking, Okay, we're going to do like a diabetes camp tour. I'm going to send him for a week to the local one, I'm going to send three weeks to that one, because that goes for three weeks. I'll send him for two weeks to that, like, I was just gonna trick them around the country. But then of course, he said, No, he was going to go to the regular camp where his sister went, and that was the end of that. And I don't know if I've mentioned here before, I think I have, but he's gone for eight weeks this summer to be a CIT. I'm so excited about that. But eight weeks, man, no share, no follow up. I don't have WiFi at this camp. He'll be fine. We're going to talk about how he wants to do it. I mean, he's 17 years old at this point, so I'm really excited for him.
Okay, we have lots coming up. Please join me for in the news we do that live on social media on Wednesdays, and that it becomes an audio only podcast on Fridays. Thank you, as always to my editor John Bukenas from audio editing solutions. Thank you so much for listening. I'm Stacey Simms. I'll see you back here soon. Until then be kind to yourself.
Unknown Speaker 36:01
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