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That brought it into the patient arena for the first time? LifeScan
certainly helped. In the meantime at Ames Company at the time I left,
which was in the mid-70s, it was just starting to grab hold. The Boehringer
visual strip helped it a great deal, because you could teach patients
to read the strip visually without an instrument and there were some
people who thought that was advantageous. And so a lot of early glucose
testers were testing visually. Dr. Lois Jovanovic, she’s out in Santa
Barbara at Sansum, but she was at New York Hospital, Cornell University,
back in those days, which were the mid-70s, and she had a group of
pregnant diabetic women and she managed them through their period
of pregnancy and amazing success. She had a concept that women had
to use blood glucose meters and strips until they could prove that
they were proficient reading them visually. And she called it "freedom
from the instrument." Because they felt it was easier. Remember
that the instruments were not small. They were fairly sizeable things.
Even LifeScan’s first one was no miniature. She had a lot of success
with the visual meters.
One of the things that really turned this upside down was a very
successful symposium paid for by Boehringer Mannheim. Boehringer Mannheim
paid for and supported an international symposium on blood glucose
management called "Diabetes in the 80s." It was held at
Rockefeller University in New York and it was chaired by Charles Peterson,
Lois Jovanovic’s husband. Chuck Peterson chaired it and there was
an international array of speakers talking about where the future
of diabetes is going in the next 10 years and as a part of that discussion
was the discussion of patient self-monitoring. And that kicked it
off, gave it real impetus as far as professional support.
Did you have anything to do with getting that symposium going?
It was my idea. I searched out Chuck Peterson and asked him to chair
it and he selected Rockefeller University. At that time he had ties
to Rockefeller. He and I put together the program and the speaker
list. We brought several diabetes specialists in from England and
we brought some in from Japan and Canada as well.
And then the president of Boehringer Mannheim U.S. at the time was
a fellow by the name of Bill Coll. He’s down in Florida somewhere
now. He in his position as president had the foresight to know that
this market was going to really grow and he shared with me the enthusiasm
for the potential of this market. In any case, he now only approved
the underwriting of the symposium in New York, he actually arranged,
he said that he didn’t want to hold this big worldwide symposium and
have nobody show up, so he said that we will have every ADA affiliate
in the United States. The American Diabetes Association sent two doctors
at our expense from every state in the union, one hundred of them,
paid all their expenses for this 2-day symposium. Surprisingly, especially
in New York, the doctors turned out in large numbers.
What year was that? It was 77-78. That’s a published hardbound
textbook, by the way, edited by Charles Peterson.
Have you written anything about this? No I haven’t. But Dick
Bernstein called me several weeks ago and called and said that one
of his patients said maybe we should write this down and Dick said
that I was the one who should write it. But it’s never come to be.
The groundswell then was starting. All of these basic instruments
were designed for physician office use. And then suddenly in the mid-70s
the idea of patient testing starts to grow dramatically. And that
has an effect on the later design of instruments. Ames' third generation
instrument was the Glucometer and that was really designed; now it
was small and compact and more patient oriented. They had the first
patient meter.
Boehringer, it took them 6 years to develop a meter to read the Chemstrip
bG. That didn’t come out until the late 70s. That was the original
Accu-Chek.
Glucometer became generic like Kleenex. The Glucometer was also from
Kyoto Daiichi.
When was that introduced? I am going to guess. I would say
that was about 75.
And then the next one, and by now I had left Ames, and they had several
iterations after that, but they went back to their own instrument.
In other words, they had two from the Japanese back to back from Kyoto
Daiichi, and then they went back to their own design people. I think
they called it the Glucometer II.
What about you? Your retired when? Last year, 1998. After
about 33 years in the diabetes industry. I joined Ames in 1966 and
left in 1973…. I left Ames Company in 76 and went to Boehringer. I
was at Boehringer Mannheim for 10 years. I left Boehringer Mannheim,
and went up to Boston, where I worked with MediSense.
MediSense introduced the first meter that used an entirely different
principal. Up until MediSense they all read reflected light. MediSense
introduced the first biosensor. That operates on a whole different
principal. Very exquisite. And it’s been duplicated by every other
company.
Is that electro-chemical? Yes, that is the electro-chemical
technology.
I was hired by the Boehringer company to put them in the diabetes
business. They weren’t in that business when I joined them. And then
7 years later it was $100 million. I mention that because I then left
Boehringer and went to MediSense. MediSense wasn’t in any business
before. And in 3 years we reached $100 million. That was a sleighride
the likes of which… It was very exciting. Absolutely superior technology.
What was your career? I was definitely in marketing. A marketing
executive.
I didn’t catch the first meter with a digital readout? That
was the one that LifeScan introduced, I believe the one from England
was a digital readout. Before that there was the analog with the sweep
of a needle and a scale. Whether it was analog or digital was merely
a consumer kind of thing. It had nothing to do with the accuracy.
Digital is not better than analog. The A.R.M. in 1970 was the first
that could give you a numerical readout. The official name is reflectance
photometry.
Those are the two technologies today, reflectance photometry
and biosensor or electro-chemical? Yes. And the biosensor approach
interesting has been developed by what remains of Ames Company [now
Bayer] and LifeScan has a biosensing type.
I understand that Dr. Bernstein uses only the Elite because that
is the only one that is accurate. That is such an appropriate
description of Dr. Bernstein. He is my dear friend. And we have been
friends for years. And I give him this much. Right or wrong when he
makes an evaluation of an instrument or system he sticks by it no
matter what. They are all about the same.
I left MediSense and started my own consulting business about 92.
I did that for a couple of years and that’s how I got hooked in to
PTS [Polymer Technology Systems]. I worked there fulltime for a couple
of years and then I retired.
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