The ideas that changed everything

Something kept nagging at us.

Amid the soul-searching we did in the wake of Navigator, there was still a lingering feeling that we weren’t finished.

We couldn’t deny what enthusiastic doctors, people whose lives had improved, were telling us. One mother described how Navigator, helping her young son with type 1 diabetes, allowed him to sleep through the night for the first time since his diagnosis.

Navigator showed we were on the right track, but “close” wouldn’t be enough. Small adjustments would not be enough. The real transformation came when we recognized the need to completely reinvent our CGM from a user perspective.

Another piece of feedback we received at the time resonated deeply: “The disease is silent, but its management is noisy. » What good is innovation if it adds noise?

Our second attempt at building a CGM was more than just a redesign. It was a reinvention. We began by adopting a new design process that placed three elements at the center of our work at Abbott:

• Ease of use
• Accessibility
• Affordability

The FreeStyle Libre era began with these principles firmly in place.

Libre revolutionizes diabetes care

After rounds of prototyping and years of hard work, FreeStyle Libre debuted in Europe in 2014 to high demand.

Christopher Scoggins, senior vice president of sales operations and marketing for our Diabetes Care business, remembers those early days: “After rounds of prototyping and years of hard work, the launch of FreeStyle Libre was met with overwhelming demand. Online stores quickly sold out, confirming our innovative design principles and underscoring our unwavering commitment to customer needs.

FreeStyle Libre has retained Navigator’s revolutionary wireframe enzyme technology, but made it more user-friendly in several ways.

A significant improvement was the reduction in dimensions from approximately those of two AA batteries to less than half that size.³ Today, the sensor in our FreeStyle Libre 3 system is the smallest and thinnest in the world,² about the size of two stacked coins.³

By design, Libre was also easier to use, much less expensive to manufacture with increased precision, and could be worn for longer periods of time.

Along the way, real-world and clinical studies have shown that monitoring blood sugar with FreeStyle Libre systems helped people lower their HbA1c levels.^{4, 5} They also highlighted a decrease in diabetes-related complications and hospitalizations among people using FreeStyle Libre systems.⁶

In these and many other ways, Libre has helped us realize the vision we had all along.

And with that…this story still isn’t over. We’re dedicating the next few chapters to expanding Libre’s breakthrough to help as many people as possible.

For example, how about a dual sensor, which can measure both glucose and ketones? It’s in our development pipeline – and it’s important because it could help people who are at risk of developing a life-threatening complication of diabetes called diabetic ketoacidosis.

We also present more information from our glucose research, including our Personalized Metabolic Coach Lingo.

All this despite what seemed like certain failure so many years ago. But failures are temporary. Good health is built to last.

References

¹ Haak, Thomas, Hélène Hanaire, Ramzi Ajjan, Norbert Hermanns, Jean-Pierre Riveline and Gerry Rayman. “Flash glucose sensing technology as a replacement for blood glucose monitoring for the management of insulin-treated type 2 diabetes: an open-label multicenter randomized controlled trial.” Diabetes Therapy 8 (2017): 55-73.

² Among the sensors applied to patients.

³ Data on file. Abbott Diabetes Care.

⁴ Leelarathna L et al. Continuous glucose monitoring by intermittent scanning for type 1 diabetes. NEJM 2022;387:1477-1487.

⁵ Evans M et al. Reductions in HbA1c with flash glucose monitoring are sustained for up to 24 months: a meta-analysis of 75 real-world observational studies. Diabetes 2022;13:1175-1185. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13300-022-01253-9

⁶ Miller et al. Flash CGM associated with event reduction in non-intensive treatment of diabetes. AJMC 2021 27: e372-e377.