I’m going over to my Mum and Dad’s neighbours’ house today to give them a bit of a demo of my pump and a bit of background on pumping. They have a 12 year old son who’s had T1 for about a year now and are keen to investigate and possibly get him on a pump in the next few months.

This lead me to think about what I would tell them, so I sat down and compiled a list of things which are important to me in a pump, now that I’ve been pumping for almost a year. I thought this could be useful for some of you, plus I’d be interested in any discussion. See the below and please let me know if you feel I’ve misrepresented anything or got it wrong:

Important pump features according to Nic.

  1. Pump has ‘smart features’ – especially being able to enter in how many carbs you are going to eat which it will use in conjunction with your carb ratio to give you a calculation of how much to bolus for
  2. Being able to quickly access history of boluses, corrections, BGs, number of carbs bolused for
  3. Having extended/combo bolus
  4. Easy to use, intuitive user interface/menus (like having a Nokia phone vs a Motorola)
  5. Seeing Insulin on board quickly and easily
  6. Being able to program correction factor, carb ratio and basal rates per time of day (at least every hour)
  7. Having the ability to program more than one basal pattern
  8. Having a backlight
  9. Operating on batteries you can buy from any shop (some of the old Roche ones have specific batteries you can’t buy anywhere and are expensive)
  10. Battery in pump lasting 3-4 weeks at a time
  11. Holding more than 250u of insulin
  12. Having 24hour support if it breaks – very important
  13. Cartridge having standard Luer lock (means you can use any/wide range of infusion set/s)
  14. Easy/quick to change cartridge
  15. Decent warranty
  16. Easy to program
  17. Not too heavy, bulky
  18. Reasonably attractive design
  19. Has ability to set temp rate
  20. Pump has safety features – will stop delivery if not programmed within 12 hours (e.g), can cap the amount you can inject in a single dose
  21. Pump has site change reminders
  22. Has post prandial alarms to remind you to test your BG
  23. Can easily see how much insulin is remaining
  24. Has alarms for low battery or low amount of insulin
  25. Alarms for occlusion
  26. Has both vibrate and audio alarms
  27. Cost of consumables (cartridges + batteries) competitive with other pumps


Types of pumps in NZ (NB: these are just the ones I know about, there may be more)


Insulin pump plus cartridges cost comparison

  1. CoZmo
    • $7000 for pump
    • $255 for a box of 25 cartridges
    • Hold 300 units of insulin
    • $10.20 a cartridge
    • 0.034c per unit of insulin
  2. Animas 20/20
    • $8, 550 for pump
    • $90 for a box of 10 cartridges
    • Hold 200 units of insulin
    • $9 a cartridge
    • 0.045c per unit of insulin
  3. Accu-chek combo
    • $7,000 for pump
    • $130 for a box of 25 cartridges
    • Hold 315 units of insulin
    • $5.20 a cartridge
    • 0.016c per unit of insulin

** note – I’ve tried to contact the makers of Minimed twice and never heard back from them so I figured they don’t want my money, hence they’re not listed in terms of costs as I know very little about them.


By Nic on 4 July 2009 at 7.36 am
Posted in Insulin Pumps
Tagged as , , , , , ,
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