Facts from a Medtronic User
My wife has one of these pumps - a Medtronic 719. Her life depends on it, and trust me, diabetes is not fun to have. Some of the comments are not very helpful, even offensive, implying that the wireless is there just to save some time getting data out.
The facts: The wireless feature does help to get data out of the device which helps with setting the dosage curve (annoyingly you need a PC with IE and Java), but more importantly the wireless feature is used to help regulate the insulin intake, more or less continuously. An electronic strip tester can take the blood-sugar level from a pin-prick of blood and send the level to the pump - this can happen up to 10 times a day. Another device which my wife has been piloting has a sensor that sits in the skin, and continually measures the sugar level, again radioing in the numbers only this time every few minutes. This gets the whole setup to something like an artificial pancreas, which if you think about it, is pretty cool.
The downside is that the pump is plumbed into your body. You wear it under clothes - and the wireless trick is useful as it helps you lead a more normal life.
Actually I tried to read data from the Medtronic device myself - the fact that it can't be read from a Mac is not in my mind a helpful feature so I earlier this year I tried to set up a 900Mhz radio to read from it, or to intercept the USB dongle, so I could get the data out and plot it on graphs. At the time I thought this could be a vulnerability, but because I couldn't make it work I gave up and thought no more of it.
It's a serious point about the hacking, glad it's been brought to life. As more of us get to outsource our body functions to machines, we had better make sure they can't be slipped a 'virtual mickey'.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
