Every autumn the clocks fall back, gifting us with an extra hour of sleep. As Daylight Saving Time ends on Sunday, it may be annoying to manually change the clocks in your house. However, there's one device that should never be forgotten: a diabetic's insulin pump.
Though technology has come a long way for pumps, surprisingly, it's still the patient's responsibility to adjust the time.
"There is no pump available for patients to use in the market, to my knowledge, that is either GPS enabled or connected with WIFI to a central time mechanism," said Dr. Saleh Aldasouqi, a professor of medicine at Michigan State University who has studied daylight saving time and insulin pumps.
Even though it's only an hour, not changing the time could still affect the basal rates and bolus doses on a pump because the insulin distribution is dependent on the time of the day. So why don't the pumps just automatically adjust time?
"There is the issue of privacy, and if you allow the pumps to be WIFI connected, then there is the issue of people can hack into the pump, and this is a concern," said Dr. Aldasouqi.
Dr. Aldasouqi says changing the time on your pump should be a relatively easy process, but if you have any questions you should never hesitate to contact your doctor. He also urges his colleagues to talk to their patients with diabetes about the risks they could encounter by forgetting to adjust their pumps.
"This is an important safety issue and I cannot over-emphasize that," said Dr. Aldasouqi.
