Kids With Diabetes
A decade ago we started to hear stories of kids with Type I diabetes. Since then, the prevalence of the disease in children has continued to grow. Of course, kids hate the testing related to diabetes. Enter a parent with an idea. Why not hook the testing to the very popular Nintendo DS video game (Weintraub)? That brainstorm led to the Glucoboy testing system and then to the Didget system from Bayer. The idea is to entice kids to keep testing on a regular basis. Available now in Holland, Australia (Glucoboy) and Ireland (Bayer), here's hoping the testing system catches on.
The biggest concern about any new product like the Didget is whether it will get the sales needed to propel it into the bigtime. The inventor came up with a new way of looking at an existing technology. He's hoping it catches on. Bayer - a world-wide pharmaceutical powerhouse - is hoping for more sales of all its diabetes products.
There are a couple flaws I hope the system overcomes. A disruptive product, almost by definition, is cheaper and has fewer features than existing products. It doesn't fit into the normal way a product is normally taken to market (Moore, 64). In the medical device arena, if a product is not cheap then, hopefully, it is on the list of insurance approved products. The Glucoboy/Didget is neither cheaper nor approved for insurance reimbursement (Weintraub). Kids who use it have very high success rates for managing their disease, that's true. Bayer is assuming "parents will spend anything" (Weintraub) to control their kid's diabetes.
Rooting for any device that reduces kid's problems with diabetes is a good thing. Here's hoping the Bayer Didget finds its niche.
Bayer Didget. http://www.bayerdidget.co.uk/Home
Glucoboy. http://www.glucoboy.com/
Moore, Geoffrey. A. Dealing With Darwin. How Great Companies Innovate at Every Phase of Their Evolution. Portfolio. 2005.
Weintraub, Arlene. Diabetes Is No Fun-But It Can Be a Game. Bloomberg BusinessWeek. 19 April 2010. 62. http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/10_16/b4174062706997.htm