The Thirsty Diabetic’s Mission
The Thirsty Diabetic is a blog hosted by a family in the Pacific Northwest. It was created to help support the diabetic community. Since our daughter was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes in 2021, we’ve learned a lot and this is where we share those experiences with the hope that it can help other diabetics around the world.
There’s a lot of great information about diabetes on the web and some really awesome websites; all with a shared goal of supporting the diabetic community. We’re hoping our little blog adds value to the diabetic community.
Learn.
Provide The Diabetic community with safety information about the medical devices and supplies typically prescribed and used by diabetics daily
Live.
Foster and shape an online community of diabetics and their families where we share best practices on how to live the fullest and safest diabetic life
Insulin Pump Reported Events
The graphs below don’t necessarily present the full picture and should not be consumed without the full understanding of how this data is collected and reported to the FDA. However, it’s also unwise to select medical devices for our children without any sort of data around the safety therein.
Learn.
FDA MAUDE Data
Medtronic
Insulin Pump
High-level data MAUDE data for the Medtronic insulin pump. As always, it’s important to look into at the details and we will publish the underlying data for Medtronic in July.
Learn.
FDA MAUDE Data
Omnipod
Insulin Pump
High-level data for the Insulet manufactured Omnipod over the same three-year period as measured for both Medtronic and Tandem. Please see our more comprehensive review for the Omnipod to inspect the underlying data.
Learn.
FDA MAUDE Data
Tandem
Insulin Pump
Finally, the same three-year period of MAUDE Data for the Tandem insulin pump. We will publish the underlying data and related implications in mid-July.
We want to build a community. Please join us.
Learn and Live.
Thirsty Diabetic is a
Family Effort
Raegan, our now 12 year-old daughter, bravely manages life with type 1 diabetes. She’s got the whole family behind her. That’s also Mt. Rainier behind us at Mirror Lake. If you’ve never visited the PNW, we highly recommend it.
The Thirsty Diabetic and Data
A majority of the data we publish on our site is called from the FDA’s MAUDE API.
What is MAUDE?
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) hosts a publicly available database of the acronym MAUDE – Manufacturer and User Device Experience.
As with any data and analysis formed from it, the adage remains, “arbage in, garbage out.” MAUDE data is only as good as the data that’s shared with the FDA.
Medical device companies, and other mandatory reporters are required to share medical device reports (MDR) with the FDA. While we agree with the FDA’s warning that no person should draw summary conclusions from the data, we also believe this data can provide diabetics and their families with information that can be included to from decisions regarding diabetic care.
The detail below is important to consider and found on the MAUDE website here:
Each year, the FDA receives several hundred thousand medical device reports (MDRs) of suspected device-associated deaths, serious injuries and malfunctions. The FDA uses MDRs to monitor device performance, detect potential device-related safety issues, and contribute to benefit-risk assessments of these products. The MAUDE database houses MDRs submitted to the FDA by mandatory reporters 1 (manufacturers, importers and device user facilities) and voluntary reporters such as health care professionals, patients and consumers.
Although MDRs are a valuable source of information, this passive surveillance system has limitations, including the potential submission of incomplete, inaccurate, untimely, unverified, or biased data. In addition, the incidence or prevalence of an event cannot be determined from this reporting system alone due to under-reporting of events, inaccuracies in reports, lack of verification that the device caused the reported event, and lack of information about frequency of device use. Because of this, MDRs comprise only one of the FDA’s several important postmarket surveillance data sources.
Please see the MDR Data Files webpage for Device Experience Network (DEN) and Alternative Summary Report (ASR) data received by the FDA.
MDR data alone cannot be used to establish rates of events, evaluate a change in event rates over time or compare event rates between devices.
The number of reports cannot be interpreted or used in isolation to reach conclusions about the existence, severity, or frequency of problems associated with devices.Confirming whether a device actually caused a specific event can be difficult based solely on information provided in a given report. Establishing a cause-and-effect relationship is especially difficult if circumstances surrounding the event have not been verified or if the device in question has not been directly evaluated.
MAUDE data does not represent all known safety information for a reported medical device and should be interpreted in the context of other available information when making device-related or treatment decisions.
Variations in trade, product, and company names affect search results. Searches only retrieve records that contain the search term(s) provided by the requester.
Submission of a medical device report and the FDA’s release of that information is not necessarily an admission that a product, user facility, importer, distributor, manufacturer, or medical personnel caused or contributed to the event.
Certain types of report information are protected from public disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). If a report contains trade secret or confidential business information, that text is replaced by “(b)(4)”. If a report contains personnel or medical files information, that text is replaced by “(b)(6)”. The designations “(b)(4)” and “(b)(6)” refer to the exemptions in the FOIA. For example, “(b)(4)” may be found in place of the product’s composition and “(b)(6)” may be found in place of a patient’s age.
MAUDE is updated monthly and the search page reflects the date of the most recent update. The FDA seeks to include all reports received prior to the update but the inclusion of some reports may be delayed.