Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

My insulin pump controller has a bug

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 172 posts

Re: My insulin pump controller has a bug

#91

Post by MauranKilom »

From the twitter description it wasn't clear whether this was just a display bug or the device actually failing to record the user input.

I naively assumed it was just failing to display the decimal point. But no, going by the manufacturer statement, the actual value entered and used will ignore the decimal point. You still have to confirm the (correctly-displayed-incorrectly-received-value). If you don't pay attention (because the last 10 times it worked) you might just die... That's unbelievable.

Aside: This is reminding me of the relatively-orthogonal-but-still-awful-imo-UX where entering numbers into payment fields (e.g. card reader or PayPal app) just floods in the numbers from the right, with every digit passing through the decimal places as you type. I don't know why it irks me so much more than "normal" number entering, but it just feels so wrong. I'm entering a quantity in (e.g.) dollars, but I have to type it as a number of pennies. Normally, entering the decimal point would disambiguate my intent clearly even if I type too few or too many decimal zeros...

Re: My insulin pump controller has a bug

#92

Post by willcipriano »

stalfosknight wrote: post #71
cypherpunks01 wrote: post #58

"We understand this may impact your experience and are here to support you." I love this - I've never heard the euphemism impact your experience used to mean that your life may end . What a wild PR assignment (language off the company's safety notice https://www.omnipod.com/en-gb/fsn-11-2023 )

Why do so many people / companies insist on using grossly euphemistic managerspeak like this?

Business people don't know what they are doing so they ape whatever they see other people doing. At the heart of a suit is a great deal of insecurity and fomo.

Re: My insulin pump controller has a bug

#93

Post by phkahler »

omh wrote: post #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 i…

That linked description is very interesting. They list 3 steps that need to happen to get an incorrect dose. The 3rd step is that YOU confirm the dose. The next section emphasizes the importance of confirming it. That's all great, and yeah, the user basically hit OK but that does not change the fact that they have a software bug.

Also, since it happens intermittently with that kind of input I have to seriously question how the software is put together. If the input box shows the decimal there's no way it should slip past the parser. Something smells very wrong with how their app is put together, and that would make me concerned about other issues we just don't know about yet.

Re: My insulin pump controller has a bug

#94

Post by [deleted] »

cypherpunks01 wrote: post #58

"We understand this may impact your experience and are here to support you." I love this - I've never heard the euphemism impact your experience used to mean that your life may end . What a wild PR assignment (language off the company's safety notice https://www.omnipod.com/en-gb/fsn-11-2023 )

[deleted]

Re: My insulin pump controller has a bug

#95

Post by Mountain_Skies »

SuperNinKenDo wrote: post #3

Wow, that seems extremely serious. In any reql engineering field, this kind of thing would have serious repercussions for the engineer, and not merely the poor consumer.

In any real engineering field, the engineer wouldn't compete for a job with "engineers" who went through a two month boot camp to be an engineer. They'd also have power to say "No" when a project manager insisted on pushing out an improperly tested product.

Re: My insulin pump controller has a bug

#96

Post by patagurbon »

e2le wrote: post #85
mtmail wrote: post #2

Non-twitter link: https://nitter.net/morganherlocker/status/173045572181552742... (edit: I'm not the author) "Notified today that my insulin pump controller has a bug where the leading decimal point will be dropped, ie: changing a dose of .21 units to 21 units. I can reproduce randomly ~1 in 5 times so probably a race condition. Easily one of the worst software bugs I have ever heard of."

It sounds like the bug was in the Android app. Shouldn't the microcontroller (on the pump) be validating dose values received? (dose > MAX_DOSE) ? return DOSE_TOO_HIGH : return DOSE_ACCEPTED; 20 units is obviously dangerous for a single dose.

There is a max dose but it is a user setting. Mine is set to 25, since I would take about 20 if I ate a few slices of pizza for instance.

Re: My insulin pump controller has a bug

#97

Post by pixl97 »

wwilim wrote: post #72
sidewndr46 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

wouldn't this put someone into a state of insulin shock?

If you wanted 0.66 units and got 66 units, I am pretty sure you would die. I would count on the tissue around the infusion site not having enough throughput to release it all into your system at once and swelling up. This would mean the problem would spread over a few hours, but it would be an extreme emergency anyway. To put it into perspective (at least with my insulin to carb ratio, it varies from person to person…

Heh, yea, this is why when I went to DEFCON I disconnected the feed to my body. I mean it's not likely someone's going to try to murder me via bluetooth, but why take the risk when I didn't have to.

In the days before I had a pump I did something similar to myself. I had a short acting insulin and long acting insulin both in pen form. Managed to give myself the large overnight dose which should have been the long acting with the short acting pen. After about 15 minutes I realized something was up when I felt the low coming on and spent the next 2 hours drinking a disgusting amount of orange juice.

Re: My insulin pump controller has a bug

#98

Post by thfuran »

MauranKilom wrote: post #91

From the twitter description it wasn't clear whether this was just a display bug or the device actually failing to record the user input. I naively assumed it was just failing to display the decimal point. But no, going by the manufacturer statement, the actual value entered and used will ignore the decimal point. You still have to confirm the (correctly-displayed-incorrectly-received-value). If you don't pay attenti…

>I don't know why it irks me so much more than "normal" number entering

Because it's a grievous violation of your (and presumably every user's; I know I hate those too) understanding of how a text field works. And certain types of edits are made significantly less convenient by that behavior as well.

Re: My insulin pump controller has a bug

#99

Post by omh »

phkahler wrote: post #93
omh wrote: post #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 i…

That linked description is very interesting. They list 3 steps that need to happen to get an incorrect dose. The 3rd step is that YOU confirm the dose. The next section emphasizes the importance of confirming it. That's all great, and yeah, the user basically hit OK but that does not change the fact that they have a software bug. Also, since it happens intermittently with that kind of input I have to seriously questi…

Also it would be very possible to misread the confirmation.

If I've just entered "0.21" then when the confirmation screen reads "21" it's not immediately obvious that it's wrong.

Re: My insulin pump controller has a bug

#100

Post by patagurbon »

testplzignore wrote: post #31
patagurbon wrote: post #14

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?

Both the Omnipod and Dexcom apps prevent screen recording. Possibly for user privacy, but I'm suspicious of that. I don't really have a way to get a second video recorder at the moment.
Post reply on HN