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.