Chris reviews new features of the MiniMed™ 780G system

I switched to MiniMed

My name is Chris, a MiniMed Champion who’s been living with type 1 diabetes for 35 years. On the day of my diagnosis, I was admitted to the hospital, and the next day I was learning how to inject using an orange (apparently the peel is a great stand-in for human skin) before injecting myself for the first time later that day!

I have gone from self-injection of native insulin (isolated from pigs) to recombinant insulin delivered by insulin pump, to now being on a hybrid closed loop system with MiniMed for nearly six years. And the closed loop system has truly changed my life, from the MiniMed™ 670G system to the MiniMed™ 770G, and now the MiniMed^TM 780G system.

Don’t get me wrong, I haven’t always been on MiniMed products. I have previously used insulin pumps from two other companies and one CGM from another company. Access to the closed loop system is what really drove me to look deeper at and move to MiniMed.

 

My MiniMed^TM 780G system experience

My experience has been truly amazing. It’s safe to say the MiniMed^TM 780G system has made an improvement to my healthcare.

Top features

Here are the features I enjoy most:

1. Meal Detection™ technology.* Like everyone else, carb counting guesstimates don’t always work perfectly. The MiniMed™ 780G system deals with post-meal blood sugars more aggressively than just adjusting basal rates. It works great at keeping my blood sugar in range and back to goal.

2. Target glucose value. With the MiniMed™ 780G system, my healthcare provider and I get to choose my target blood glucose value (100, 110, or 120 mg/dL).** I have long wanted to have access to a lower target than previous systems would allow (120 mg/dL only).

3. New Guardian™ 4 transmitter and sensors (CGM). Now with Medtronic, I can stay in a closed loop system and no longer need to perform fingersticks to calibrate my sensor.† This has freed me from having to worry about when I was going to eat (and bolus) so that I wouldn’t have too much insulin on board when a calibration would be coming up. I am free to sleep when I want, wake up when I want, and eat when I want without worrying about when to calibrate!

4. Updated alarms and notifications. With the transition to the MiniMed™ 780G system and the Guardian™ 4 CGM, the frequency of alarms and notifications has dropped substantially from my experience with previous models. Honestly, I had silenced many of the non-urgent alarms on my pumps, but now with the MiniMed™ 780G system in SmartGuard™ mode, I almost never receive an alert on my pump unless it’s one of the brief instances where my blood sugar value has gone out of my upper or lower target range.

 

More freedom to exercise

I am a bit of an exercise enthusiast (running eight full marathons and completing all six of the World Marathon Majors). The MiniMed™ 780G system has allowed me more freedom to exercise without worrying about whether or not my blood sugar levels are behaving properly before my workout (using temp target well in advance) or after my workout (helping to ensure that post-exercise and meal hypoglycemia is dealt with in advance!).

I was doing fine before transitioning to the MiniMed™ 780G system, but I have been doing even better since I did the upgrade.

 

My recommendation

My experience with the MiniMed™ 780G system for nearly three months has truly been amazing. I can do more and not worry about my post-meal blood sugar, frequent calibrations, and waking up on time to make sure I calibrated my CGM.

It has given me more freedom to do what I want, when I want, and allow my diabetes management to be back of mind – I leave it to the system to do its thing! I tell everyone I know how great the system is and how it’s worth checking out to see if it can make your life with diabetes easier, and most importantly, better!