Tandem Diabetes Care this year began a full launch of its smallest insulin pump, called Mobi, after the device received clearance from the Food and Drug Administration last year. The pump is available for people with Type 1 diabetes ages six and up.
At the American Diabetes Association’s Scientific Sessions in June, Tandem shared results of a six-week survey from the initial limited launch of the device that found 86% of users were satisfied with Mobi. Of the 332 respondents, 81 had previously taken multiple daily injections of insulin, 173 converted from a different Tandem pump and 79 converted from a different brand of insulin pump.
MedTech Dive caught up with Tandem Chief Medical Officer Jordan Pinsker after ADA to talk about early feedback on Mobi, plans for additional features and how the company is thinking about market expansion with the new pump. Tandem declined to share sales projections for the device because it is still early in the launch.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
MEDTECH DIVE: With Mobi, are you focused on bringing people in who are taking multiple daily injections (MDI) of insulin, or converting users from other pumps?
Tandem Chief Medical Officer Jordan Pinsker
Permission granted by Tandem Diabetes Care
JORDAN PINSKER: We want to expand the market, not just take from other pumps. We want more MDI conversion. We want people to go on pumps who weren’t on them before. We also want to change the narrative. It’s not tubed versus tubeless. It’s wearability.
You have so many options to wear this thing. It is so small. We think that’s going to bring people over, perhaps from other pumps, because they’re going to get to experience Control IQ, and they didn’t have that option before.
What makes Control IQ different from some of the available automated insulin delivery systems?
Control IQ not only modulates basal rate every five minutes, but it gives these discrete and separate automated correction boluses up to once an hour in the background. It doesn’t just raise the basal rate gradually.
These automated correction boluses [doses of insulin taken with meals] really reduce burden because people realize I don’t have to bolus as exact as I used to have on my prior therapy. I’ll get a follow-up auto-bolus.
They learn very quickly what the system can do.
What we see in our studies, the people who are struggling the most, who have the highest A1Cs, rely on the auto-bolus the most. They bolused the least but they got the most improvement in their outcomes. Those who needed the most help got that help from the auto-boluses. That’s something they weren’t experiencing with prior therapy.
The auto-boluses, in addition to the basal rate modulation, can really make a difference in glycemic control.
How are people deciding between a small, tubed pump like Mobi versus a patch pump?
We’ll make a patch eventually for those people who want it. In the meantime, I think the key to this is you can move it and you can disconnect. A patch pump — let’s say your skin’s irritated — you take that patch pump off, that’s it. The patch is dead.
Here, you can say, “I’ll move it.” You can take it out of your sleeve. You can disconnect it from the infusion set and move the whole thing somewhere else. You could say, “Today I want to wear it in my pocket and I don’t want to have it on my skin.”
In some situations, you just do not want the device on. For intense sports, for example. You can disconnect it. Those kinds of lifestyle freedoms are what really make this unique.
What can you tell us about Tandem’s plans for a patch-pump option for Mobi?
We’ve announced tubeless options for the future. We’re working on a patch-pump option. We’ve also purchased the Sigi patch pump. That is a different pump. It’s about wearability and offering more options to patients.
A lot of diabetes tech companies have talked about making their products available for more people with Type 2 diabetes. Is that something you envision with Mobi?
Absolutely. We’re running a pivotal trial now in Type 2 diabetes. You saw results at ADA from others who are doing a safety trial [with no control arm].
We’re doing a true randomized control trial with over 300 people in the study. We will finish it this year. It’s already fully recruited.
That trial is really about Control IQ approval for Type 2 diabetes. Once we have Control IQ approval, we can put it on any pump. We can put the updated version on [the t:slim] X2 and Mobi for Type 2 diabetes. We’re using X2 pumps but it translates to go on either pump. That’s the nice thing about the framework we have.