Dexcom CEO Kevin Sayer
Could in-hospital use of continuous glucose monitors become a new normal after the COVID-19 pandemic? Dexcom CEO Kevin Sayer thinks so.
As the pandemic ramped up in March, FDA issued temporary guidance allowing increased remote monitoring of hospital patients in order to limit contact with hospital staff. The guidance included CGMs made by companies such as Dexcom (NSDQ:DXCM) and Abbott (NYSE:ABT).
Preliminary data suggest that CGMs helped, according to Sayer, who spoke with MassDevice today as part of a virtual version of the American Diabetes Association’s annual Scientific Sessions. (Hear some clips during our DeviceTalks Weekly podcast at the end of the week.)
“We’ve even heard stories of patients who came in and they were about to ventilate them, and then they realized maybe their glucose values were out of control. Getting their glucose values under control enables leads to figuring out a whole much more about these patients before they take drastic steps,” Sayer said.
(Here are more highlights from this year’s ADA Scientific Sessions.)
The experience is also enabling Dexcom officials to gain insights on how to better configure CGMs to support hospital workflows.
“I think over time if we can capitalize on this and continue to gather data, this will position us very well to get into that segment in the future,” Sayer said.
It will be up to FDA to decide whether to allow CGMs to stay in hospitals post-pandemic. But Sayer said: “I know from the hospitals we spoke with, they have no intention of giving it up.”
In other news, the Dexcom G6 Pro Continuous Glucose Monitoring (CGM) System will start shipping to healthcare providers across the U.S. on July 6. The professional version of the G6 allows healthcare providers to view data about patients’ glucose patterns over a 10-day period. Patients meanwhile get to view real-time glucose data and receive real-time hyper- and hypoglycemic alerts (when used in unblinded mode).
Next up is the G7, but the release of Dexcom’s next-generation CGM will be delayed amid the challenges of setting up and running clinical trials amid the pandemic. The company, for now, is not disclosing a launch date.
“If we didn’t have our great G6 product, I’d be very upset and I’d be pushing everyone, but we still have a great platform to rely on,” Sayer said.