Before you get all nervous and wonder if I have yet another ‘fun’ health issue, the answer is no, I do not have Diabetes but a lot of other people do.  According to the American Diabetes Association:

“Diabetes is a disease in which the body does not produce or properly use insulin. Insulin is a hormone that is needed to convert sugar, starches and other food into energy needed for daily life. The cause of diabetes continues to be a mystery, although both genetics and environmental factors such as obesity and lack of exercise appear to play roles.

There are 23.6 million children and adults in the United States, or 7.8% of the population, who have diabetes. While an estimated 17.9 million have been diagnosed with diabetes, unfortunately, 5.7 million people (or nearly one quarter) are unaware that they have the disease.”

My father-in-law is one of them. Thankfully, research is ongoing for not only ways to improve a diabetic’s quality of life but to one day find a cure.

I recently learned about a cool new gadget that even uses Bluetooth technology and was given the chance to review it.  I would have been very limited in my ability to review the new Wavesense JAZZ except my sweet father in law was down here bailing us out while I was so sick recently.  So, the best of both worlds, we worked together to create this review and give you the facts in our unbiased opinions.

The Wavesense JAZZ is a new product that is a no-code blood glucose monitoring system.  Created by AgaMatrix Inc., Diabetic Care Services and Diabetic Express, both mail order companies that provide diabetic supplies and prescriptions, are the first to offer WaveSense Jazz™ in the United States. There are a lot of great features offered in the JAZZ, such as having one of the largest backlit digits (making reading it a lot easier), but it is one of the first meters to provide a score for a user’s glycemic variability.

Well, at this point in the literature on the Wavesense JAZZ, I was kinda lost so I looked up what Glycemic variablity really means for a Diabetic patient.  Basically, Diabetic Care Services explains it as:

Glycemic variability is a tool used to show how frequently blood sugar changes over a period of time and how intense these fluctuations are. Glycemic variability may also allow for an end-user and his or her health care professional to better analyze the effect of high and low readings over specific days, weeks or months.
The set arrived and looked really simple and well designed.  It came with an instruction manual, the kit itself and a couple of boxes of test strips.  Of course, as this was all new to me, I wondered what was the benefit (other than it was  really cool) of this newly designed system.

Basically, the Wavesense JAZZ has numerous features designed to help users gain tighter control:

•   Automatic mealtime tagging: Smart before and after meal tagging (breakfast, lunch,  dinner, and nighttime) allows the patient to change the tag based on their personal schedule, the kit itself and a couple of boxes of test strips. to provide more useful information when analyzing glucose readings.

•   Positive feedback feature: Alerts the user if their blood glucose result is within their pre- and post- meal target range to encourage tighter control. The ranges can be easily changed by the user or his/her health care professional.

•   Compliance tracker feature: Displays the average number of tests/day

•   Extensive memory: 1,865 memories for an average of 5 times/day for one year

That all sounded great to me but what about someone who would actually be using it?

My father in law has been using two types of insulin for several years and tests his sugar level 5 times a day – before breakfast, before lunch, mid afternoon, before dinner, and at bed time. So he gave the Wavesense JAZZ a try.  He said,”The Jazz system was easy to use.  The system I normally use and the Jazz system were in close agreement on the blood glucose numbers since I used both systems simultaneously for the tests I ran over a 2 day period. There was a spread of less than 10 mg/dl in the readings.  All readings were taken from the fingers.”

“The Owner’s Guide was well written and easy to understand. The three control tests that I ran, yielded numbers with a spread of 5, that were within the control range indicating that the system was functioning properly. I found setting the date and time to be easy. The instructions for the various Tag’s were easy to understand. Since I have been testing my blood for several years I did not feel it necessary to set the various tag’s since I am well aware of what my numbers mean and how much insulin I should take based on the readings. However for a person just starting out I feel that the Jazz system warnings and alarms would definitely be helpful in getting started on a meaningful testing program.”

Of course, the real question is, as always, would he buy it?

“As to whether I would buy this system – my answer is both yes and no.  Let me explain.  I am on Medicare and Tricare and the Jazz System is not on the Formulary (Tier2) list of the four approved systems.  Also the test strips are not on the non-formulary tier 3 product list.  So you can not get supplies for this system from our required delivery service as a retired military serviceman.  Therefore there is a significant cost disadvantage for me to use this system. Of course, they have also just dropped the system I have been using off of their formulary list too.:(  I hope my comments were helpful and I liked testing the system.”

So, there we have it, an experienced user’s opinions and thoughts.

As for where you can purchase the Wavesense JAZZ, it is available exclusively at Diabetic Care Services for patients with insurance and at Diabetic Express for patients without insurance and is free with the purchase of 100 test strips or more. One set of 50 test strips runs about $44.95.

Many thanks to my father-in-law Norman, Family Review Network and Diabetic Care Services/Diabetic Express for making this review possible.