Animas One Touch Ping review
Wanted to write up a review on my new Animas One Touch Ping insulin pump since I got it a month ago. I’m really enjoying the freedom on pump therapy vs. the old way of doing things, long acting insulin twice a day by shot and short acting insulin prior to meals the same way. Getting my blood glucose under tight control was really hard, but through the use of pump therapy, my BG’s are getting much better as I get used to it.
Important features
Some of the important feature include:
- Insulin on board
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- Measures the amount of insulin delivered previously to avoid stacking of insulin and low BG’s
- Bolus calculator
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- BG calculator adjusts for high BG’s
- Carb calculator will calculate meals by carb count based on your BG
- Combo bolus for delayed bolus for high fat meals
- Remote BG meter with full pump functions for wireless pumping!
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- 500 food database on the remote meter to help calculate with the carb calculator. Customizable food database using ezManager Max software
- Multiple basal rates can be programmed for different basal rates depending on time of day
- Multiple basal programs for sick days, temp basal, etc
- Upload your own tunes using the ezManager Max software
- Reports can be generated using ezManager Max software
ezManager Max – First Impressions
I recently joined a diabetic forum over at http://www.diabetesforums.com/. This is a really good forum to join if you are diabetic, as you can draw on other’s experiences and share your own. I posted my impression of ezManager Max, which isn’t entirely pro. I understand where they are trying to go with the technology, and they are headed in the right direction, but it seems like they’re using bones and flint rocks to get it done with the feel of the software. Feels really 90′s. Here’s a review I wrote on their forum:
Been working with my pump (One Touch Ping) for a little over a month now, but I have to say a couple of things that I really am having a problem with. Don’t mean to rant, but here it is.
The ezManager software really is convoluted. I don’t have a major problem with java based software, but I’m not sure why they chose this platform to begin with. Secondly, why all the different connection types for both the meter and the pump? If anything, the pump should simply have a USB connection as the remote meter does. The IR dongle that connects the pump simply amazes me as to how bad it sucks. It may as well be a direct connection. On that note, you shouldn’t even have to connect the pump to get the bolus history and settings from it, since the remote meter has access to all of these functions, right? It should be a LOT simpler.
Thirdly, there is no way to upload your results to a website so that your doctor has access to your records. Since this data is kept in a database, this should be an easy thing to do. As a workaround, I use a free product called “CutePDF” (CutePDF – Create PDF for free, Free PDF Utilities, Save PDF Forms, Edit PDF easily.) that prints to PDF.
The results come out landscape, so to rotate the PDF so it’s readable, you would need at least Adobe Acrobat Standard or Professional to rotate pages, or you can use a utility called “RotatePagesPDFSrv”. You can download that here:
Download rotatepagespdfsrv.zip
To use it look at the example, but it is a command line utility. Download the zip file, extract it to a folder on your c:\ drive like rotatepages. Open a command window (Start… Run… “cmd” without quotes). Type (without quotes) “cd \rotatepages” and hit enter. Once in the directory, just type:
RotatePagesPdfSrv.exe in.pdf out2.pdf /p1 /r90
Depending on how the PDF got created you may need to try different angles to get it straight, such as /r90 or /r270. The /p parameter is the pages to include, so you may want if it is 3 pages long, use /p1-3 for instance. Also make sure to use quotes around file names that have spaces in them. So say you are rotating the file “Blood Sugar Report.pdf” from Documents (Vista or Windows 7 in this case):
RotatePagesPdfSrv.exe “c:\users\username\documents\Blood Sugar Report.pdf” “c:\users\username\documents\Blood Sugar Report2.pdf” /p1-3 /r90
Anyway, it gives you a workable PDF file that you can use to send to the doctor. It should be a lot simpler than that, but at this time it just isn’t.
And fourthly. You can’t simply download the software from their website if something happens to your original CD. Not sure what they’re hiding there, but the software is pretty much pointless unless you have an Animas pump. I also don’t see any software upgrades, but maybe I’m looking in the wrong place?
Food database. Custom items suck. There is a 25 character limit on the food name? What? That restriction doesn’t exist for the foods that are in the meter by default. And I don’t necessarily want my custom entries going to “Favorites”. I’d like them to go to the catagories they belong in. Also when you create your own custom menu, you have to overwrite what’s on the meter? Why not append? A lot of terrible functionality here.
The music tone creator is cool, but it should allow for importing midi, since that’s all it uses. Also 25 notes kinda sucks
In addition to this post, I’ve found some other things that could be improved. When generating reports, the food database is not reported. I’m not aware just yet if the database stores these values for reporting, but in my case, at least in the beginning of getting my pump dialed in, I could use reports that indicate not just the carb count, but what I ate that caused my BG’s to change the way they did. Another thing that would be nice is if you could minimize the program!
Custom Composer
ezManager Max also comes with a custom composer that you can use to make your own pump tunes. I’m only a drummer, so I don’t know how to play or compose on the keyboard, but my fiance does, and she wrote some jingles for me:
- Slayer – South of Heaven
- Ozzy – Mr. Crowley (solo)
- Living Color – Cult of Personality
Extract the zip file to your “My Files” folder within ezManager Max, located at c:\Program Files\ezManagerMax\My Files. You should now have several files:
- southofh.ezt
- crowlypt.ezt
- cultofper.ezt
- funone.ezt
Now open ezManager Max and click on “Configure Pump Tunes”. Choose the One Touch Ping and the COM port that the IR dongle is on and click “Start”.
At this point, you need to choose what category the tune is for. I set South of Heaven up for my Reminders, and other tunes for other functions. Let’s stick with Alarms and then just click Open:
It defaults to the path we were talking about earlier, so just choose the tune you want to associate with Alarms.
Then just click on “Upload”, and it will upload the tune to the pump. Repeat for all the other categories.
Food Database
Within ezManager Max, click on “Configure Food DB”. Choose your remote meter, One Touch Ping Meter and the COM port it’s on and click on Start.
From here, you can do quite a few things, like download the food database from your meter. It comes with 500 foods preloaded, but you will probably want to customize it for yourself. I always make a backup, so I downloaded the factory default database from the meter first thing. If you happen to have lost yours, here’s a copy of that database for download. Again, unzip the file, Meter Original.apf, into c:\Program Files\ezManagerMax\My Files.
To customize your favorites, click on Add Custom to Favorites.
You have to enter something in each field. A great place to get all the info you need, if you don’t already know, is http://www.calorieking.com. Click Add.
The thing I don’t like here, is that I had to add it to my “Favorites” and could not add it to the category it belongs to “Fast&Pkgd Food”. When I started building my favorites, I also took into account to add each item as a single entity. In other words, one serving, however much I typically eat. For spaghetti, for instance, I put in 1/2 cup servings, even though I usually eat about 1 1/2 to 2 cups. Then when you pick your foods from the DB on the meter, you can increase the count. Once you’ve added all your favorites, make sure to click on Save to save the DB to a file so you can edit it and open it later. Then just choose “Upload Food DB to Device” to upload it. Make sure your meter is on and connected when you do this, it times out pretty fast.
Summary
All in all, I really think Animas is on to something here, and I’m happy with my pump choice. It’s definitely usable, but I don’t have anything to compare it to, since this is the only pump I have any experience with. I can see where they are going with it, and there are a lot of pros here, but it could stand some improvement. I’m not sure what Animas policy is about making the software available for download from their website, but it would be nice to be able to receive updates to the software, and/or the software in full if the CD is ever lost. I have an ISO image of the CD for version 2.0.9, but hesitate to post a link to it until I understand Animas policy on this. It would only benefit people who actually have a pump, so I don’t see the harm in it, but I want to be clear on their EULA first. Improvement to the software is going to come in new versions of the software, but how to obtain those updates is a big question.
1
I absolutely hate the OneTouch Ping Glucose Meter. The area that receives the test strips does not have a guide, nor is it lit like the far better Freestyle Meter. The test strips can even move fron side to side rather freely. That’s resulted in more error codes than we can afford considering the exhorbitant pricing of test strips. The overall quality, lighting, and readability of the display is embarassingly bad.
2
I would have to agree with you about the lighting. I have to hold down the OK button for a couple seconds to get it to light up, which can be a pain. There should be an option to keep it lit, despite the battery consumption.
What really gets me is the quality of the software, and the apparent lack of upgradability. They should post their software to their website, and it would be nice to integrate results to the web. From what my doctor has said, however, is that HIPAA is definitely a concern for all such results being posted to the internet. Another thing is in the readability of the reports. They’re not laid out well. A little cracking of the database and Crystal Reports should do the trick though
3
Overall, though, I’d have to say my life is not only easier on the pump, but my blood glucose levels are MUCH better. I know it’s not as good as it can be, but I’m grateful it exists.
4
Yeah, well, what can I say, saying this is 90′s technology is being rather forgiving. The way this software works, the way the pump & meter interact, the way the meter functions… this stuff was outdated in 1989!
I’m new to the pump as well, and I am totally shocked at how backward this stuff is. Aren’t there something like 200,000 pump users in this country? Seems like a big enough market to put a TINY bit of effort into the interface design and functionality.
I do get better control using the pump but otherwise it hasn’t made my life easier AT ALL. My god I just spent 3 hours trying to get the software to work! You have to disconnect and suspend the pump to upload data? Obviously I could go on and on and fill up pages of comments, but lets just say the OneTouch Ping is a slap in the face to diabetics. And you charge $6000 for this? No wonder Health care costs are out of control in this country.
5
Todd, I have to agree with you on a lot of points. Since I got my pump, I have been having a hard time getting my BG’s under any kind of control. Most of the reason is my busy schedule, personally. I’ve been working with my doctor though, and have been doing well over the last week with some adjustments.
Agree on the cost of the pump, the features should most definitely be kept up to date. Some of the functionality definitely lacks for sure. One would think that they would be more responsive to customer feedback as well. One nice thing would be to fix and update their software on a more routine basis, and make it available on their website for free download.
6
To ammend my previous post. My BG’s were looking good at first, but starting going all over the place again. Again, main reason is because work got very busy as of late with a lot of lay-offs.
7
I’ve heard that the reason for the pump/cgms software not being updated, etc., as is typical for other kinds of devices, is that the update itself and the update process must be tested and approved for each update by the FDA. What would you do in their shoes … fight it of course, well up to a certain point. Maybe they need more of our help, maybe in terms of getting the FDA to streamline the process, or some other improvement/side step/etc..
If someone could get, or create, the doc for the apis/interfaces, data formats, etc., then maybe we could collaborate and create an open source version of some sort. Certainly we would have to worry about our butts in court in the case someone made a mistake, be it user or developer/provider. Imagine a noob, honestly just getting started and not fully understanding all the ramifications, it would suck if they messed up somehow and had an issue which resulted in someone, themselves or someone else, to get hurt, yikes!! Indeed a dangerous road to travel.
8
This is probably the case. Having worked for a company that required FDA approval however, I’ve seen what kind of corruption this government agency is involved in.
The company I worked for made life saving devices, defibrillators. They are used, of course, during a cardiac arrest, and something of a last resort to start the heart. Somehow, they were sued over such a device killing someone (who was already in cardiac arrest of course), and their approval was revoked by the FDA. This gave the competition room to make money, because the company I worked for, made the best defib, and had the market cornered. During the down time, they took out a loan with a medical company you may be familiar with, Eli Lilly, so as to not lay anyone off. Then came the time to get approval renewed once again, a year later, and we had mock up FDA investigators come through to approve the lines of production at $5k per day, previous FDA employees. Once we got FDA approval, we paid Eli Lilly back quickly, and right before paying them in full, Eli Lilly sold the company to corporate raiders who came in and skeletized the crews, offering early retirement and decimating the company.
I don’t, therefore, hold a lot of stock in FDA approval, however, I do see the need to maintain standards so that no one gets hurt. Since the software is mainly for recording purposes, first and foremost, I’m just at a loss as to why updates are not made available. In fact, in talking with the sales rep over at Animas, he indicated that I should forward any ideas to their development team. This is probably the best way to approach improving the software, along with feature requests. It would be nice to know what kind of hurdles their development has to face, and possibly help make their product better.
9
ok so im not on the pump YET! but i really want this one, i like that the meter and pump work together. but do u really use it or r u still grabbing your pump and doing it from their? o also on average how much are they, i have been looking at a few and i know my insureance will pay for some of it but is it too much?
10
I do use the meter to deliver most all of my insulin. I use the carb calculator quite a bit in fact. The food database is kind of hokey and I used it at first, but have just been counting my carbs and entering them manually. Now that I’m more used to carb counting, it’s a lot easier.
As for price, my insurance covered most of it. I am out of pocket $900, but since I got the pump in December of 2008, I have yet to see a bill from Animas. Should probably give them a call to see what’s up.
11
Just switched to Animas (Ping) from Medtronic 522. I have been lifelong Medtronic customer (15 years) and thus far am very happy with the decision. Here’s my thoughts:
Pro’s
Ping Meter- Great meter- you really don’t have to touch the pump. This takes the nice part about the pod and puts it into the pump.
LCD screen- no questions here- it is truly awesome
Quick delivery of bolus
Con’s
200 unit reservior- I have to refill w/ enough to get me through 3 days.
Quick delivery of bolus will make you pucker if you aren’t used to it. MM went slow- even on the slow setting the Animas takes seconds to deliver your bolus.
Good Luck–
12
Just another comment about this. I know the insulin pumps fast, but that’s the desired result for me. I wouldn’t want anything slower. What I would like to see in future pumps, is the ability to give insulin via the BG meter in a “fire and forget” fashion. The problem with this configuration is that if there is any mis-communication between remote meter and pump, it just stops pumping.
Another thing I don’t like, that I’ve found after using it for a while, are the reminders. So say I give a little insulin before bed, I don’t want it reminding me to check my BG in an hour. So I change the reminder from 1 hour to 0, but it still reminds me!
Another feature I would like to see on the pump itself, is the ability to use the up and down arrows properly. So to get to main menu as it is now, I have to scroll down all the way, instead of just hitting the up key once. Lame.
13
Hi there, love your review. And I think you’re right on the money.
Is it possible for you to email or put up a working link for the food database and the music compositions? The current links are down. Thanks so much,
By the way, I tried to email you as well, and the email bounces back from your Blackberry account.
dazealex
14
Thank you for pointing that out. I redirected my email, since I moved to Android and dropped my Blackberry, so that’s fixed. Unfortunately, I did not back up my download files on the server! I’ll have to see if I can find them here on my home server, and if I do, I’ll upload them. I’ll keep the comments updated… Sorry!
15
Hi, my blood glucose is usually very good, my a1c ( before pump ) was 6.2, but i got the ping because i hated carrying around my pens and needles and having to take them in public, someone once told the principal that i was doing drugs, that it what made me want to get the pump. i love the onetouch ping!!!!!! it made my life 1000x better! and no more shots!
16
Hi, thanks for this review it was very helpful. Have there been upgrades to the pump since 2009? Also, how is the customer service at Animas. I am a current Medtronic user who’s warranty is coming due soon and am so tired of dealing with the seemingly incompetant people there. Thanks!!
17
Madi, glad you’ve got such good A1C’s! I’m really shocked that they would even think you are doing drugs, just because you have diabetes. Any principal would totally understand once he knew what was up, and then whoever reported you would get an earful, or should.
Becky, I have had mine since 2009, so I don’t know if they have made improvements. It does take a while to get the readings from the pump, since it uses infra-red to transfer to the computer, and I know the doctor complains about how long it takes at times. But again, I love this pump because it has remote delivery, and insulin/carb calculation built in. Not sure if I would do any other model until they come up with a new generation of pumps.
18
I would be interested in your mr crowly tone…but the link is broken
do you still have it??
19
Sorry, it got lost when I had to delete some files. If I can find it again, I will get it back up here. I’ll do some searching for it.