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My insulin pump controller has a bug

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31–40 of 172 posts

Re: My insulin pump controller has a bug

#31

This is the Omnipod 5 when using the Android app as the controller. I received the email this morning. This is indeed a pretty terrible bug. I'm hopeful the confirmation screen prevented any real harm from being done. E: I can reproduce. It seems to happen around 1 in 10 entries for me.

I'm very curious to see this in action. Are you able to get a video of it showing typing in the dose and showing the confirmation screen missing the decimal point?

Re: My insulin pump controller has a bug

#33
A clearer description of the bug is here:

https://twitter.com/Tims_Pants/status/1730515134731182490

It's wild that this sort of bug got through testing.

As a diabetic it feels like our insulin pump software is very conservative and lacking in features especially compared to what some of the "closed loop" things would like to do.

That seems reasonable if the manufacturers are having to do lots of safety testing.

But if bugs like this are getting through then the testing obviously isn't anywhere near as robust as we'd like.

Re: My insulin pump controller has a bug

#35

May be this pump/issue: https://www.tandemdiabetes.com/docs/default-source/legal/com... However, the document states that "there is no defect identified in relation to the use of this product", which would contradict the Twitter post, so maybe it's a different product or either the poster or the document is wrong.

I've got this Tandem pump and we discussed this exact bug when I received the pump.

To my understanding this isn't the same type of bug. Tandem are just saying "it can be confusing to enter fractional rates".

This bug is for a different pump and is "when you enter a fraction rate it will change the rate". That is much worse

Re: My insulin pump controller has a bug

#36

I know the department of defense used to use Ada because it was a “safety critical” language. I feel like when it comes to this devices there should be more stringent guidelines around coding practices. Is that not the case?

Why? Safety Critical Software engineers are expensive. If you write a webstack with Node.js and React to run the insulin pump you can hire web developers. They are much cheaper. And who would be able to tell the difference? Boomer lawyers and judges working on the lawsuit targeted against us won't understand.

Re: My insulin pump controller has a bug

#37
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

10x ? 21 instead of .21 is 100x This is basically Russian roulette with insulin with even worse odds.

But does the device contain that much insulin?

This device can hold up to 200 units of insulin in it's cartridge. I'm not familiar with it to say if it has any safety interlocks to administer some sort of max dose lower than that at a time though.

Re: My insulin pump controller has a bug

#38
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

10x ? 21 instead of .21 is 100x This is basically Russian roulette with insulin with even worse odds.

But does the device contain that much insulin?

Yes.

A typical pump will contain enough for several days. My pump right now has 100 units and is only half full.

Re: My insulin pump controller has a bug

#39
I'm not familiar with insulin dosing, but I'm guessing a sharp 10x jump should warrant my app telling me to go to the hospital?

I'd expect medical devices like this to have a last line of defence safety check against bugs. Basically checking all common sense edge cases like: is this dose lethal to humans, is this dose significantly more/less than historical doses, is this dose below a level in which most humans would get no benefit. These are all easily testable both in terms of software testing and regulatory testing.

Re: My insulin pump controller has a bug

#40

I'm not familiar with insulin dosing, but I'm guessing a sharp 10x jump should warrant my app telling me to go to the hospital? I'd expect medical devices like this to have a last line of defence safety check against bugs. Basically checking all common sense edge cases like: is this dose lethal to humans, is this dose significantly more/less than historical doses, is this dose below a level in which most humans would…

It's a 100x dose.
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