Tandem t:slim X2 Pump - when a medical device looks like an iPhone
This is another article in the series:
"What year is it?" - outrageous memes when your pump looks like a pager
Pens and pumps: how diabetes technologies hide their medical identity
Before the smartphone: the insulin pump as pager (the history of AutoSyringe)
Pump manufacturers finally realized that pagers are obsolete. The new template? The smartphone. The best example is the Tandem t:slim X2 - the pump both authors of this article (Carrie Rentschler and Benjamin Nothwehr) use.
The generational contrast between them is clear. Rentschler (diagnosed in 1973) moved directly from syringes to a pump, skipping pens entirely. Nothwehr (diagnosed in 2002) started with syringes, then pens, and has been using a pump since 2007. Their perspectives complement each other.
The similarities are almost absurd
The article includes two photos taken by Rentschler. One shows the t:slim X2 next to an iPhone 8 from the side - same shape, thickness, silver edges, power button in a similar spot. The other shows both devices' screens - touch-enabled, bright, with black cases and screen protectors.
Rentschler and Nothwehr write: "New skeuomorphic [here: imitative] relationship is arguably more successful in articulating the appearance of the insulin pump to that of an aesthetically desirable communication technology in the present moment". In other words: the smartphone works better than the pager because smartphones are everywhere. You carry an iPhone in your pocket, touch it, look at it. The pump fits that logic too.
But the real problem is the sounds
Laura Forlano, a researcher at Illinois Institute of Technology who also has diabetes and wears a pump, wrote a widely discussed article about "hacking the feminist disabled body". In the quote cited by Rentschler and Nothwehr, she says: "Their sounds diverge from the familiar family of Apple iPhone ringtones. They speak in tongues. The uninvited stranger at the dinner party".
The pump may look like a smartphone, but it beeps and vibrates in a way that instantly reveals it as a medical device. Pump sounds feel alien, outside the familiar language of notifications. "They speak in tongues" - they use a language we do not understand. Then suddenly, in a stylish restaurant, this sleek pump starts shrieking like an irritated animal.
Rentschler and Nothwehr add: "The promise that the pump will recede from view and blend in to one's outfit through its design as a contemporary communication technology, then, may shape a visual relationship between diabetics and non-diabetics more than the embodied, sonic relationships diabetics have with their insulin pumps". Visually - success. Sonically - still a failure.
The authors also mention something deeply personal. Both wear Tandem pumps. And "hearing the sonic alarm of one of our pumps, the authors of this article have on more than one occasion asked the other, is that you or me?" They have genuinely been unable to tell whose pump was going off. That says a lot about how shared these sounds are for them - and how unlike smartphone notifications they remain.
My take
t:slim X2 is a step in the right direction. At last, a pump that does not look like it belongs in a technology museum. But it is still a compromise. The real answer is full integration with smartphone notification systems - quiet vibrations, discreet alerts, customizable sounds. Tandem and other companies are working toward that, but for now, our pumps still "speak in tongues". That was true not so long ago (in 2021) - and today? Notifications, a pump with a color display, and full control from a mobile phone.
More strange patents and failed ideas - in the next post...
The photograph comes from a scientific paper by Carrie Rentschler.
