Dexcom Seven Software: Installation and Glucose Trend graph

I hear the software released with the 3-day system really sucks. I have been playing with the 7-day system software this morning. Here are my thoughts in no particular order. I will clean up this post as time goes on.

INSTALLATION AND DATA UPLOAD

1. Software takes a long time to install, but it's easy. Also easy to upload. Plug in receiver, plug into USB port on computer. People who don't know much about computers should be able to figure it out.

2. If you have more than one family member using a Dexcom, you can maintain more than one person's data on the software. This is probably geared towards health care professionals (Dexcom sent a copy of the software to my endocrinologist).

Here is the screen that pops up when you launch the software:









3. Easy to upload data. Just select the patient from the menu and click the upload button. It takes a few minutes to upload the information from the receiver. The information is still on the receiver after it transmits to the computer.

DEFAULT GRAPHS

There are four graph types generated by the software: Glucose Trend, Hourly Statistics, Glucose Distribution, Daily Statistics.

Glucose Trend graphs are just what you'd think. They show the glucose values from the Dexcom and the One Touch Ultra over time. You can choose the day and time to start the graph, and you can display values for up to 7 days from the start time. Here is my first day of readings:

The blue dots are the 5-minute averages from the Dexcom sensor. The red diamonds are the calibration readings from my One Touch Ultra meter. The yellow bars represent signal gaps when the receiver failed to receive one or more 5-minute averages from the transmitter. The dashed lines are the high and low blood sugar alert thresholds as they were set when I uploaded the data. The green shaded area is my specified target glucose range. I can change this interactively using the software.

The second and third diamonds on the left are my initial calibration finger sticks. The first diamond shows that when I tested I was pretty low, so I treated that and waited before calibrating the meter. The blue circles start a few minutes after the initial calibration.

As you can see from the first day, the calibration finger sticks were pretty close to the Dexcom readings.

Here is a chart showing three days:









Finally, you can select a small segment for a close-up view:

Here you see some problems with gaps and accuracy. I am still learning how best to live with Comrade Dex, but I am getting better. One day soon I'll do a post on accuracy.