Freestyle Libre 3 CGM

During my last appointment with the endocrinologist, she prescribed me the Freestyle Libre 3 continuous glucose monitor (CGM). I have been using the Freestyle Libre 2 for about a year and have just received a three-month supply of sensors. So right now, I have five of each sensor type at home.

There appears to be two major differences between the two products. First, the CGM sensor is much smaller for the Libre 3. You can see the difference in the packaging.

The white container on the left contained a Libre 3 sensor and the gray package held the Libre 2. Additionally, the Libre 3 does not require the user to scan the sensor, either with a dedicated reader or your phone. My success rate in reading the old sensor was only about fifty-fifty. Now I just open the iPhone app and data will be transferred automatically. The app looks and feels identical to the Libre 2 app, but you cannot adjust the parameters of the readings graph. People have complained online that it is too zoomed out, and users cannot see small but significant changes in blood sugar when eating food or shooting insulin.

I also got the endocrinologist to enter my insulin prescription into my inpen. In case you forgot, inpen is a Bluetooth connected insulin pen that uses refill cartridges. The manufacturer, Medtronic, calls it a smart insulin pen. However, all I can see is a pen that sends the last dosage to your phone; the intelligence is all in the app. Before shooting up, you use the app to calculate how much insulin you need. If you use the inpen, it automatically records the dose. For a dose from a manual pen, you can log shots in the app as well.

I think the app is good, and it does connect to some CGMs, just not the Libre 2/3 app. On the other hand, the pen seems to be more gimmicky than useful. It is not difficult to log manual insulin shots into the app myself. The inpen can deliver half-units of insulin, but due to the design, often I end up deliverying one half-unit less insulin since the rotating knob is loose and moves left/right slightly when depressed. I still have a lot of the regular Humalog pens left and mix the useage of the two pens.