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Amin Zayani shares the inspiration for his new product to protect insulin with Diabetes in Control Publisher Steve Freed during the ADA 77th Scientific Session in San Diego.
Amin Zayani is the founder and CEO of MedAngel. He works with his team of engineers, pharmacists and designers on improving drugs safety for patients who live with diabetes and rely on temperature sensitive drugs like insulin.
Transcript of this video segment:
Steve Freed: This is Steve Freed. We’re here at the American Diabetes Association 77th Scientific Studies. We’re here to present you with some exciting interviews with some of the top endos from all over the world. We have a very unique guest: Amin Zayani, who is involved with technology and diabetes with a product that I find, there was always a need, but nobody ever developed the product to take care of that need. I don’t know why. It should have been developed when insulin was discovered back in the early century. So, maybe you can start off by telling us a little about yourself. You came all the way from Germany to be here. So tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do.
Amin Zayani: So, my name is Amin. I was born and raised in Tunisia, North Africa. I moved to Germany to study environmental resource and management. So I’m a solar energy engineer by training, but I also live with Type 1 diabetes for 10 almost 11 years now. I take daily injections to stay alive and well. A couple of years ago I had a very frustrating incident when my insulin stopped to work. I was taking loads of insulin and my blood glucose wouldn’t drop. I ended up in the hospital, but luckily without DKA. I realized later that my refrigerator failed to keep the right temperature to store my insulin. It was a very frustrating incident. I tried to find a solution to prevent it from happening again. I didn’t find it, so I decided to make one.
Steve Freed: So, that’s interesting. One of the other things I find, including the fellow that just walked out of here, developed a very unique product for the blood glucose monitor. Basically, if you have questions you can ask the CDE and text and get a response. Technology is really changing rapidly. What I find is that people that develop the most efficient and breakthrough products when it comes to diabetes are people with Type 1 diabetes. That’s because you’re passionate about what you do. You see a need, because of your diabetes and you want to do something. Not just for yourself, but you want to do something for the masses out there. So that makes you a very passionate person when it comes to helping others. That’s great, because those are the type of people that I get to work with all the time. Everybody I work with involved in diabetes is passionate. We don’t involve ourselves in diabetes to be millionaires. We do it because we want to help people. I can certainly say the same for you, otherwise you wouldn’t have developed it. So let’s talk about the product a little bit. You have a unique product, it fills a need so tell us a little bit about it.
Amin Zayani: As I told you earlier, it all started on that day when my refrigerator accidentally froze my insulin and made it completely useless. There was no way to find out because it doesn’t change color or consistency and I was just injecting loads of it and it didn’t work. It was quite frustrating because this is the kind of stupid accidents that shouldn’t happen. All you need something to keep track of the storage temperature and to alert you when there’s a problem. I tried to find a solution that does this because the whole thing is very closely and meticulously monitored and processed until the moment of dispensing the insulin to patients. I thought that it’s not a technology problem and that it must be another kind of problem, why this doesn’t exist. To make a long story short, I decided to come up with a solution to this and I can show it to you. It’s very easy to use and practical device. It’s a wireless temperature sensor that continuously measures the temperature of insulin or any other temperature sensitive medication. It is placed with the insulin. In my case, this is my insulin, in this case. And also in the refrigerator at home. It’s connected wirelessly with my phone. Every time it starts to get dangerously hot or cold, I get an alarm. This is basically the general idea. A number of details or features make it very special and unique. One of them is how easy it is to see the interface and understand what’s happening. For example, it’s showing a temperature of 84 degrees Fahrenheit, which is a very abstract figure for someone who’s not trained as a pharmacist or who doesn’t have the understanding but a green heart is very easy to understand. This is something my little cousin understands or my grandmother understands. You look at the screen and you see that it’s a green heart and you know you’re fine. When it gets warm, then it turns into an orange and raising heart and a red heart upside down is too hot and then the same in the other direction. If it starts to get cool and when it’s too cold. This is one main feature of our product. The second feature is that all you need to do as a user is to select your medication from the list of supported medications we have. We support all of the insulins that are available on the market in the US and in Europe. All you need to do is to select the medication you are using, the insulin you are using. The package, so if it’s a vial or a cartridge or a throw away pen and that’s it you’re set, you’re done. The app will know what is the safe range for your insulin or your medication, whether it’s open. So after it’s taken out of the fridge or when it is still in the fridge and will alert you only when it’s critical. So, you can either protect it if it’s not too late, or you know with 100% certainty that it’s no longer good and you need to get fresh insulin.