In today's video, I'm interviewing the CEO of Dexcom, Jake Leach, and the chief technology officer, Peter Simpson. Hey everyone, it's Kamil, Not a Diabetic, your diabetes tech guy. Today, Dexcom shared a very important report sharing findings and actions they've taken as part of the commitment to the community and findings from the customer advisory council.
And I'm thrilled to share that this is an initiative that I've been a part of since inception earlier this year and a member of the council. Now, I want to be fully transparent. Today's video is not sponsored. Dexcom has never sponsored any of my videos. We did not agree questions that I was going to ask or topics that I was going to bring with Jake or Peter.
I do want to be fully transparent that Dexcom has compensated me for the time that I've dedicated to this initiative in meetings that we had.
Today's conversation talks about findings of the report, the journey Dexcom has been on, and how they are addressing feedback from the community on all the topics that we've raised.
I really hope you enjoy this video. If you're new here, I've been YouTubing about diabetes tech and life with diabetes over the last 9 years at this point. So, if you want to learn more about tech, time and happiness, and beyond, I would love for you to subscribe.
This is my conversation with Jake and Peter. And Jake and Peter, thank you so much for joining. I am very, very excited to have the conversation and start with congratulating you on the launch of the report, which will be shared sort of at the same time as this interview.
So, Jake, I just wanted to sort of start with you. And you know, you've been appointed as the CEO sort of quite recently, and we've just seen so much change from Dexcom sort of over the last 6 months. Obviously, you becoming the CEO, a really senior executive from Google joining the board, new chief commercial officer, and as part of this report, you were announcing a brand new position as I understand that the chief product officer. I'm keen to sort of hear from you and opening, you know, where you are in the transition that you sort of the transformation that you are leading at Dexcom, and sort of how would you describe the some of the drivers behind all of this change at Dexcom?
Yeah, thanks Kamil. It's a pleasure to be here and get the chance to chat with you alongside Peter Simpson. So, yeah, a lot. So, I'm just starting. It's the beginning of June now, so I'm starting my sixth month as the CEO of Dexcom, but I have been part of the team for many years as you know, over two decades. Not as long as Peter though. Peter's been here for even longer. We were both part of the original startup at Dexcom here. So, it's exciting to see what this technology has been able to do over time, and I think, you know, to your question around the evolution, one of the things I've certainly been a part of this journey for Dexcom for many many years, and seen the growth, and seen, you know, all the opportunities. And one of the things that's been core from the beginning has always been this idea of we got to develop the right solutions that really matter to our users and really solve problems for them. And the way I characterize it in the early days of our development of this product, it was really simple.
We needed sensors that worked better, were more reliable, and easier to use, right? And the issues were quite glaring, like what was needed to be fixed. And so, we focused on that. And I think as we've continued to evolve, continued to grow, servicing, you know, now more than 3 and 1/2 million people every day, we've needed to learn new methods of improving ourselves and making sure that we're always meeting customer needs and really the customer advisory council was one of a number of different initiatives that we were doing to really make sure that we are hearing from folks out in our community who are both using our products, are prescribing our products, have loved ones that use our products. And so it was really around let's make sure we hear from them. And one of the things I think has been consistent at Dexcom's culture is always user-focused.
But it was clear to me that we didn't have all the tools we needed to make sure that we delivered on that. And so part of changing our organization and adding a chief product officer whose basically number one's job is to be customer obsessed and responsible for the whole experience of a user's journey with us from the time that they first learn about what Dexcom does and that you know what a CGM is to the using the product, getting support for the product, and ultimately being a lifetime customer. That is a journey that is complex and is very important. And I felt like we needed a group dedicated to that. So that's why we're in the process of recruiting a chief product officer who sets the vision for the product strategy but also make sure we have the right operating model around how we execute. So we're still transforming as an organization and I think listening to users is key. We're transforming how we do that and also transforming how we develop products.
Yeah. I was just reflecting. So I've been YouTubing about diabetes tech for just under nine years. And at that point you had something like two I think the G4 and G5, right? Now there is a suite of products across I mean obviously depends on the geography. So I feel like that chief product officer role probably reflects just the broad range of products they now offer globally to the diabetes community and beyond, right?
It's a really good point, Kamil, because for users of our technology, there are overlapping user needs, but there are also very specific user needs to specific users and groups of users. And so, we are starting to differentiate the product line. You know, we have Stelo, we have Dexcom One Plus outside the US, we have G7. We're developing the new G8 platform that will service all of those product lines. And we have a new product Flex that we're launching in Germany specifically really for basal insulin users. So, that differentiation and making sure we focus and we innovate for all users. I think one of the important things is that we're continuing to innovate for the type one community, for the type two, the broad spectrum from intensive insulin use in type two all the way down to all the different medications that are used to lower glucose. And then even the folks that have prediabetes and are health, wellness, longevity. There's a lot of people that can have benefit from this technology, and so it's really around making sure we're focusing the right efforts in all the different areas that provide our users with what they need.
Yeah, amazing. So, Jake, I would love to have you sort of maybe give us a bit of a glimpse into like your sort of role and sort of like with so many products, so many different parts of the community, so many regions they now serve, you know, how do you dedicate how do you make decisions on sort of what to dedicate time to? So, love to just hear sort of how you choose what to prioritize in your incredibly busy schedule.
Yeah, it's a good question. I think you know, every time I've changed roles, I think Peter probably got the same experience. Every time you change it, you probably do too, Kamil. Every time you get a new role or change, even though, you know, for me it's been at the same organization for many years, you always have new challenges, new things to learn. You know, it's one of the things that I always find it so exciting about getting the opportunity to do new things is the just the learning aspect of it. So, we never stop developing ourselves, particularly as leaders, as individuals. You know, my number one priority for Dexcom is making sure we've got the right values as an organization because the cultural component of making a company run and serving users, it all comes back to culture and it's something that I'm reminded of all the time when I see how we're operating, what's going really well, and what needs to be improved. A lot of it comes back to culture. So, you know, making sure we got the right values as an organization, make sure we're focusing in on the right culture. And you know, one of the things we've been working on lately is this idea of rapid improvement, always focusing on doing something better than the next day, and learning from what goes really well, and learning from what could have gone better. And so, enabling that within the culture, that's generally my area focus, and so that is a pretty broad area. But, I do spend quite a bit of time focusing in on that. And the number two thing for me is just to make sure we as an organization have the right talent. You know, it always comes back to the people within the organization that are leading and doing all the different activities that we need to do for our customers and to be successful as a business. That is the number two priority for me is talent. So that's kind of how I prioritize things and then the thing I really love is I love product and I love learning about new user needs and how we're like, for example, how we're applying AI to our systems. It's I just get fascinated by that. So I do spend a good amount of time with the product teams and the development teams learning about what the opportunities are and to some extent helping guide those, although folks like Peter are much better at that, but I do like to get involved.
And Peter, Jake mentioned sort of values as being a really key part. One of the ones that I would sort of highlight is I guess you guys always had a focus on serving pediatrics and kids living with type one. I know you've been at Dexcom for a long time and one of the a few product launches I can probably highlight. Two probably the most meaningful one is the Dexcom Share and Dexcom Follow capability, which was so sort of transformational for kids and parents sort of how they manage their diabetes. A question to you maybe to give us a glimpse into sort of how it's something that I think raised few eyebrows in the community on the 15-day G7 product, which currently is only available for adults. Peter, maybe you can give us a bit of an overview of sort of the 15-day product and sort of, you know, if you're hoping to sort of bring it to children to continue that core value of Dexcom.
Yeah, absolutely. Thank you. So, as Jake mentioned, I have been here with Dexcom for going on 24 years now. So, I've seen the whole spectrum and all of the evolutions of products we've made. And when it comes to our values, you know, we really feel that the type 1 diabetes community and specifically the pediatrics are the ones that we can help out the most and that our product has the most impact for. And you know, I love that you mentioned the product that we had the share and follow function because if I look back at the history of our innovations, that was one that had probably the most impact in terms of people's lives especially with parents with children diabetes and how much of an improvement in lifestyle that that brought to the community. So very excited about that innovation, but also the continuing innovation as we go forward. Now going to the 15-day, very excited about the 15-day. It's a phenomenal version of our product. It's extending the use life from our product from 10 days to 15 days, but it also has a lot more with it. Has an updated algorithm that improves the accuracy to an 8.0 MARD, so highest accuracy in the market as well as some other improvements to the algorithm which you will notice when you wear the product. You'll see the data is a lot more consistent, a lot smoother. Accuracy is improved and so as we get that out. Now the product has been launched for adults first and the reason for that is we recognize how important reliability is for adults and pediatrics, but pediatrics specifically, they tend to they're a little harsher on the product. You can imagine in the summer when they're running around the patches fall off a little bit more. And so we wanted to make sure that the pediatric that we were taking care of the pediatric patient population the most and so until we get that reliability up to our standards, we wanted to make sure that we kept the labeling to 10 days. We are making improvements. Right rolling out right now is an improved patch for the 15-day which will significantly improve the stability of that patch during wear. And as we roll out these improvements, we'll bring the 15-day to the pediatric population as well. So, it's more a matter of time than if.
Mason, I think that's really reassuring to hear for people in the community. Great. Jake, I would love to pivot to the actual advisory council that you've sort of set up and very kindly invited me to be part of the advisory council as well. Sort of what is the goal here and what does success look like over the next 12 months with this initiative?
Yeah, it's a super important initiative that we just kicked off at the beginning of the year with this. You know, I think when we thought through how to do this, one, we wanted folks that were within the community that we wanted diversity in terms of perspective, type 1, type 2, clinicians. So, in the report that we're issuing, you can kind of see who was involved and really appreciate Kamil, your participation there. We also wanted folks that were going to give us straight talk. Like, here's what you guys do great and here's what you need to improve. And so, that was also part of the importance. If we just heard about the good things that while nice, that's not really the goal was to also understand what we needed to improve on. And so, that was a really important part of the group and the activity. You know, what does success look like? I think success looks like the discussions and the feedback and the activity of the council shows up in actual experience in users' hands. And I think as we'll see in the report, we've already started that. You know, we've been listening to users for many years, but I think some of the direct feedback from the council is factored into our future plans and you're going to see that coming out. Some of it already we've already taken some actions, and we're going to continue to take actions to basically reflect and then act on that feedback so it shows up in users' hands. The other thing about the advisory council is it's the idea is it's long-standing, so it'll continue on over time so that we always have it's one of it'll be one of our feedback mechanisms for our users in the community along with others, but that it's one of the key ones to make sure that we're always improving and understanding that CGM is a technology that's going to continue to evolve both in the experience and the tech hardware and everything, and we want to as the pioneers, we want to remain at the forefront of innovating user-centric innovation as I call it.
Great. So, in the conversations, you know, we've had an opportunity to sort of discuss and feedback, but I wanted to give you sort of an opportunity to maybe like share a few words to people in the diabetes community who are watching this who might have had not the greatest experience with a Dexcom sensor or you know, one of the challenges that we've discussed. You know, what's your sort of is there anything you wanted to sort of say or any statements about the future that you wanted to make. Just wanted to give you an opportunity.
Yeah, sure. I think you know, number one thing is that we appreciate and want to thank all of our customers, right? Being a Dexcom customer, trusting us to help you with your health journey whether it's within type 1 diabetes or type 2 or even prediabetes and beyond. You know, we very much appreciate customers. And I think you know, we're not perfect. The technology's not perfect. I think as one of the benefits that Peter and I both have is we've seen the evolution of the technology over time. And as it's continued to improve, there's still plenty of opportunities for us to improve on what is already, you know, kind of the best technology out there. And so we're very committed to that. If you look at, you know, we make a pretty significant investment in research and development every year. And all of that is in a goal to move forward the user experience. And we're absolutely committed to continue to do that. And I think one of the things just that was really unique for me, one of my biggest learnings from the Customer Advisory Council, was one of the things that we could do better is communicating all the enhancements we're making or have made to the product. Because one of the things we launch a generation product and we keep making improvements to it. You know, for the entire time that that product is on the market. I mean, there were things we did, you know, as we've been moving away from G6 towards the future G7 and G8, but that we were still doing things to make sure we were improving G6, you know, and it had been on the market for many, many years. So, being more transparent about and having a communication channel to provide that information to users, I think was one of my key learnings. Was we need to build opportunities to do that more. So, people know how things are improving and changing over time.
Yeah. Great. Peter, I would love to maybe deep dive into a few of the sort of takeaways from the report itself. One of the areas that you guys have discussed in it is what we in the community call sort of goose-necking. And sort of what happens to sensors. You know, what have you found as part of this piece of work and what you're doing to fix it?
