Goodbye Wasted Insulin: InsulinSaver Helps People with Diabetes Keep Their Medications Effective
Sibling co-founders Hanna and Oskar Dahl have joined forces to build an easy-to-use device that alerts people dependent on insulin when their medications have been exposed to too much heat or too much cold.
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Challenge
Most people with Type 1 diabetes and many with Type 2 have to inject themselves with insulin every day, sometimes up to five times a day. Every dose requires thought as the individual measures their blood sugar and actively uses the insulin to keep their glucose within a healthy range.
This daily medication dance causes serious decision fatigue. According to one study, people with insulin-dependent diabetes have to make an average of 180 more decisions per day compared with people without the disease.
But that’s not all. Unlike most pills that are taken daily for chronic diseases, insulin is a bit delicate. Specifically, it can become ineffective if it comes in contact with hot or cold temperatures.
So what do you do if you have diabetes and you bring your insulin to the beach on a hot day? Or accidentally leave it in your car on a cold day? Or what if you live in a country without electricity? If you’re concerned that your insulin has been damaged by heat or cold, you have two choices: throw it out or use it and roll the dice.
Taking ineffective insulin is a disaster waiting to happen. Imagine taking a carefully dialed dose of insulin before bed in order to counteract a heavy meal, only to find out in the middle of the night that the dose did nothing. You could end up in the hospital. On the flip side, imagine throwing away expensive insulin every time you worry that it’s been exposed to too much heat or too much cold.
Most people have accepted this costly, dangerous reality as part of the challenge of diabetes. But when Hanna Dahl realized how much insulin she was wasting due to temperature swings, and how much uncertainty the problem was adding to her life, she decided to take action.
Origin Story
Hanna Dahl, who lives in Sweden, was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes at age 10. As a college student she fell in love with traveling. She’d pack a backpack, get a train ticket, and be off to a new country.
She was well acquainted with the problem of exposing her insulin to high and low temperatures, but the problem came to a head on a trip to Italy in 2017. She stored her insulin in a fridge in a hotel room, and then after swapping the insulin into her pen, she noticed her blood sugar rising. She gradually increased the doses, thinking she had an infection. She kept getting worse. She got dehydrated, got a headache, and felt nausea. She got to the point where she was doubling her normal dose but still had high blood sugar.
Finally, her travel partner realized that foods were partially freezing in the hotel fridge and that the insulin must have become inactive. She survived the episode but it left her shaken. And determined.
When she got back to Sweden, Hannah laid the problem out for her brother, Oskar, who was running an engineering consultancy. He started to workshop the problem. It turned out to be a bigger technical challenge than expected, says Oskar. Insulin goes bad quickly when it’s too hot or cold, and so any kind of alert system had to be well calibrated.
“It doesn't change shape, color, or taste,” says Oskar. “When it’s too cold, it’s just, boom, inactive. And you have no way of knowing.”
Their first breakthrough came in the form of new micro-computers. Oskar realized that these new micro-processors could survive on a cell battery, thus making their prototype possible.
Hannah and Oskar labored quietly on their device – a smart temperature monitor that is purpose-built for insulin – even receiving CE Mark approval in Europe. But they didn’t think much of its larger market potential until they attended ATTD, a major conference on diabetes technology.
“We went to ATTD expecting nothing,” says Oskar. “But we were completely overwhelmed by interest from physicians, nurses, and patients. We had people from Brazil standing in line to buy the device. That’s when I knew this could be something real. After that event, we realized this could actually help a lot more people.”
“We went there with something like 100 samples,” says Hannah. “We thought we’d give out 20 of them. We were out in 10 minutes.”
From that moment forward, Hannah and Oskar shifted their thinking entirely, from a small startup focused on one person’s problem, with a single market focus, to a scalable company with the potential for global distribution.
Under the Hood
InsulinSaver is a continuous temperature monitor the size of a small pocket calculator that is meant to be stored next to insulin. The device is calibrated specifically for insulin, and gives the user warnings if their insulin has been exposed to harmful high or low temperatures.
The key word there is “harmful.” The device is smarter than a typical portable temperature monitor that has a maximum and minimum temperature alarm, Oskar notes.
“We're evaluating the temperature in a smart way, and we will not produce an alarm just because of a temporary spike or dip in temperature.” Since he lives in Sweden, Oskar gives the example of a skier carrying insulin in their jacket. They might open up their coat for 10 seconds and expose the insulin to extreme cold temperatures for a moment. But InsulinSaver is smart enough to know that there hasn’t been enough sustained cold to ruin the medication.
It was essential to Oskar and Hannah that their device work without cables or apps, so you can just throw it in your go-bag or in the fridge near your meds, and it will do its job. They purposefully chose to keep all of the functionality on the device itself, so they were never constrained by an uncharged phone or a weak bluetooth connection.
Final Word
InsulinSaver is another entry into the list of medical devices that appear elegantly simple but serve a major patient need.
We’re excited to support Hannah and Oskar and the InsulinSaver team because they’re tackling the dual goals of improving outcomes and cutting costs. Having insulin-dependent diabetes is expensive – for individuals, companies, and nations. Preserving effective insulin and avoiding unnecessary waste can save millions. At the same time, and more importantly, ensuring that insulin is active and effective every time will save lives.
InsulinSaver can also save brain space, and that’s a precious commodity for someone with diabetes. Having diabetes and being insulin dependent means making decisions all day and worrying about your blood glucose levels constantly. Having a smart tool that assures you that your insulin is effective to use takes one worry off the table.
InsulinSaver also has the added benefit of making people smarter about their insulin storage. For Hannah that meant realizing that the window sill where she liked to set her insulin pen got too hot from the sun. As she got alerts throughout her week, she modified her behavior and now has a much more accurate understanding of how and where to safely store her insulin.
The future appears bright for this small Swedish team. They’ve partnered with a big distributor in Germany and have made inroads in France, the two largest European markets.
Finally, we love InsulinSaver because, in true Scandinavian fashion, they want to keep their device affordable for all. There are some clear and exciting applications for their work in low-resource settings, where people with diabetes may not have access to refrigeration.
Join us in welcoming Hanna Dahl, Oskar Dahl, and the InsulinSaver team to StartUp Health’s T1D Moonshot.
Connect with InsulinSaver via email
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Published: Jul 11, 2024