Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by efficientsticks 1213 days ago
Type 1 diabetic here, they’re not close to as invasive as insulin pumps and a lot of people use those. Honestly the real problem with CGMs is they aren’t accurate enough, and they bias high - I suspect so they can pretend they eliminate hypos more than they do. (Having said that, CGMs are well worth it even with those drawbacks. They’re only invasive on the initial application.)

But I do applaud the team for working on the technology nonetheless.

1 comments

Any info on how much they're biased?
I'm not so confident on this bias claim. Biasing high would be an extremely risky decision for a glucose monitoring company, because it encourages insulin dosing which could be deadly.

Biasing low would be the move if scared of risky downsides.

When performing calibrations I typically found my (accurate) blood finger prick monitor to be 1 mmol/L lower.

It’s not enough of a difference to be deadly, as the sibling comment suggests, and the clinician guidance is to always eat something if you are feeling hypo, and at or near that level.

The upshot is that I set my CGM-linked pump to target 1 mmol/L higher to compensate.