David Klonoff 0:15

Welcome to Diabetes Technology Report . I'm Dr David Klonoff . I'm an endocrinologist at Sutter Health and UCSF . We have a very special guest today and my fellow moderator , Dr David Kerr , will introduce her .

David Kerr 0:32

Well , david , thank you very much , and I'm David Kerr . I'm speaking to you from Santa Barbara , california , and I'm absolutely delighted to welcome Greta Ehlers from DCB today to the podcast . To welcome Greta Ehlers from DCB today to the podcast . Greta , how is it you've ended up being interested in diabetes , diabetes technology and working for DCB ?

Greta Ehlers 0:54

Hi , thank you so much for having me . I think that the story on how I ended up in the diabetes tech field and how I you know I started getting interested in diabetes technology is quite a personal one , because when I was nine years old , I got diagnosed with type 1 diabetes after a really nice and painful summer holiday of sleepless and very thirsty nights , and I didn't think much about it back then . It was 20 years ago . I think the diabetes management looked quite different from today , but I think that's probably where it all started , back there . Nine-year-old Greta getting rushed to the hospital .

David Kerr 1:39

And how did you end up ? I mean , what happened after that career-wise ?

Greta Ehlers 1:46

did you end up ? I mean , what happened after that ? Career wise , I think probably the the personal thing turned into a more professional thing at some point when I realized I think I was in my early 20s and I realized I felt quite alone growing up . I I knew they have these diabetes camps . I never wanted to go . Every year they asked me at my endocrinologist do you want to join the summer diabetes camp ? I said no , absolutely not , and that was fine at the time , but then later I realized that there's nobody really I could talk to , apart from my doctors , who didn't live with diabetes . And I set up an Instagram page on social media to connect with other people living with diabetes and I think in the beginning I was just sharing , you know , my day to day life . I never really aimed to end up in the diabetes space professionally , but I exchanged ideas with people . I met a lot of great people through social media actually , and that's how I kind of ended up freelancing a bit more on the diabetes side of things .

David Klonoff 2:51

Greta , how did you end up working at DCB ?

Greta Ehlers 2:55

I was recruited by a very dear colleague of mine , mara Inchance , who's still with us at DCB as well . We were working together previously . I was working for her in marketing and she contacted me three years ago . I was just about to write my master's thesis in Sweden and she said there's this amazing organization , a non-profit , driving innovation and diabetes technology , and we think you would be a really great fit . Would you be interested in working for us and moving to Switzerland ?

David Klonoff 3:27

Greta , in case some of the listeners don't know what DCB stands for , could you tell us ? But even more importantly , tell us what DCB is , what it's all about .

Greta Ehlers 3:38

Absolutely . Dcb Diabetes Center Burn . We're a non-profit foundation and our mission and our vision is to make life with diabetes easier . That sounds really simple , but it is really . You know , it all comes down to that one thing we want to foster research on the one side , translate it into solutions out there on the market that help people with diabetes all over the world .

David Kerr 4:07

And what sort of thing was the current status with your organization ? What you're interested in ? What sort of excites you the most at the moment ?

Greta Ehlers 4:17

I think there's so many things and one of the amazing things for me is obviously that I get to , you know , experience them , I get to test them , I know , okay , if that , if we manage to get that out there , it will help people and I can really feel how it would improve my life . And I mean , ai is obviously a big one , but I think the whole trend into going more into fully closed loops is so exciting , because diabetes management takes a lot of time every day . Managing those chronic conditions takes a lot of time and I think everything that can reduce these minutes or hours managing that condition is incredibly , incredibly good .

David Kerr 5:00

And do companies and entrepreneurs and inventors do they ? What's the process involved ? Do they contact you ? Do they contact you with their technology or how does it work ?

Greta Ehlers 5:11

Yes , there are a couple of different streams . So , you know , we're usually present at all the big conferences EASD , ada , attd and that's where a lot of conversations happen , because it's easier to connect and just have a chat A big one and probably how most startups contact us is through our Diabetes DCB Innovation Challenge , which we've hosted for four years now actually , and it's basically a global competition where startups from all over the world can apply to a platform , and then , you know , we go through a different assessment stages and I think that's probably our biggest funnel .

David Klonoff 5:54

Greta , what's it been like for your organization working with Diabetes Technology Society on the Innovation Challenge this year ?

Greta Ehlers 6:03

For us it's really , really beneficial . I mean , we saw now , you know , we got 100 idea submissions for our competition this year . That also shows that there is still a great unmet need , even though a lot has been done . And DTS has been great , obviously , in helping us spread the word of their recruiting innovative solutions from the US . We're based in Switzerland and we really enjoy the collaboration . We're excited on where it will lead to in the upcoming months .

David Klonoff 6:34

Greta , you mentioned that you're working to make life easier . What are some of the types of projects or programs or divisions within DCB that different technologies fall within ?

Greta Ehlers 6:50

So I think we can kind of split up the different , you know , research fields and also startup , startups kind of categories , and one of them , obviously a big one , is artificial pancreas Technological systems that are composed of glucose sensors and insulin pumps . There's a big one in sensing , obviously , glucose sensors . I think very close to that is all the non-invasive technology , which is a big trend . We see a lot of that and I don't think it's going to decrease at all . Non-invasive glucose monitoring solutions and especially also with AI coming up digital diabetes , smart data , artificial intelligence apps , algorithms , all of these things and often they're intertwined , obviously I mean for a fully closed loop . If we take that as an example . You need all of that to make it work .

David Kerr 7:47

And for people with type 2 diabetes . Where are the major areas of interest ? Again , artificial intelligence and smartphone applications .

Greta Ehlers 7:56

Yes , a lot of them are platforms or apps . I think what we've seen in the last couple of months also is , or years , that when you speak about type 2 diabetes , behavioural change is quite a big one . It's very different , I think , from type 1 when we talk about that , and a lot of that is through apps nowadays . So I think apps and kind of remote solutions where you maybe have AI but also , you know , some healthcare professionals that's that's where we've seen quite a lot .

David Klonoff 8:30

Greta , does DCB work with any government agencies or international agencies ?

Greta Ehlers 8:37

No , what do you mean with international agencies ?

David Klonoff 8:42

Do you do projects in conjunction with , say , world Health Organization , which is also based in Switzerland , or any other international agencies ?

Greta Ehlers 8:52

We've been engaged in the WHO Global Forum , for example , and I think we also I mean one of our close partners are also more research , I think based like the University Hospital of Bern . We work really closely with them on the research side of things .

David Klonoff 9:12

Where do you think diabetes will be in 10 or 20 years ? What types of innovations do you expect to see ?

Greta Ehlers 9:21

I do expect and hope also I think that's fair to say that it will get less invasive . I know that we have come so far in the past 20 years . When I think back , I had huge glass vials and syringes and I had to inject myself with them several times a day and now I have these pumps , which are obviously helping me quite a lot . But I think it could get less invasive still . And I think the fully closed loop , automated insulin delivery , all of these trends basically , where the end user , the person with diabetes , has to do less than what we have to do now still , because I think and I say that quite a lot that the whole physical aspect is one , but the mental aspect of having that on your mind all the time before I eat , after I eat . I know that my pump will correct , but I think there's still room for improvement and I hope that's what we're going to see in a couple of years .

David Kerr 10:20

Greta , if you had one piece of advice for budding entrepreneurs here in the United States who want to enter the diabetes field and build the killer product , what would be your piece of fundamental advice for them ?

Greta Ehlers 10:38

Involve the people you're trying to help . Involve the people you're trying to help . If you trying , if you're trying to , you know , develop a diabetes management solution and you have never , ever recruited someone with diabetes , you don't have someone with diabetes on your board , then it's ultimately not gonna work , and I think that is also . It's changing now . But I think people with diabetes need to be involved in the decisions and in the development of medical devices and all of these solutions which are designed to , in the end , benefit the people with diabetes .

David Klonoff 11:11

Great , I have one last question for you . What do you see as the role of DCB to fill a certain need that wasn't really filled very well before DCB was formed ?

Greta Ehlers 11:26

Our goal , I think , is to be some sort of one-stop center for diabetes technology . We have the research , we have the startup support , we have the people with diabetes . We're several team members with diabetes on our team . We have our people with diabetes . We're several team members with diabetes on our team . We have our great network , dts , included . We work closely with the diabetes venture fund , who's doing bigger investments after they , for example , are in our challenge , and we're very unique on the market with that kind of infrastructure . We're very unique on the market with that kind of infrastructure .

David Klonoff 12:03

Well , greta . Thank you very much for speaking with us today . I hope our listeners learned something about DCB and I think it's a quite interesting organization . I'm happy that WD's Technology Society is working closely with DCB now . So we will now conclude today's podcast . This podcast is available at the Apple Store , on Spotify and at the Diabetes Technology Society website . And until our next podcast , thank you , dr Kerr , thank you , greta , goodbye to everybody .

David Kerr 12:39

Thank you very much indeed .

Greta Ehlers 12:41

Thank you .