February is of course awards season thanks to the Grammys and Oscars, and in keeping with tradition we're excited to once again offer our own encounter the "best-of" in various categories among the Diabetes Community.

What's unique about our DiabetesMine D-Oscars is that they non only kudos beat up the ago yr, but also have an eye to recognizing those who are endlessly influencing the D-Community in positive ways (plus some not-and then-good examples).

Under are our picks for the past year — and a few that have snuck in from the early part of 2017. Each one gets access to our special "realistic D-Oscar" illustrated aside the talented T1-peep Brad Slaight. Yes, he resembles a deep sea plunger, only those are Racy Circles for diabetes awareness on his promontory and hands, thank you very very much.

So, envelopes delight…

Unsurpassable in D-Tech: Closed-loop system (See Likewise: MiniMed 670G from Medtronic)

Marker a milestone by getting FDA clearance in 2016, Medtronic's MiniMed 670G is the inaugural-ever hybrid unopen loop system approved by regulators and information technology's being launched in the Unitary States before anyplace else in the world! This first first regulatory-approved device of its kind has been in the works for over a decade, and it moves United States of America closer to a fully automatic Artificial Pancreas. The system should turn available to patients in Spring, and is generating all kinds of buzz in the D-Community superior capable the launching.

Top Mover & Shaker: Howard Look back

When you reach advert with the U.S. president to talk diabetes and personalized music, and high spot an entire disease community's excitement about hospitable-source, do-it-yourself-applied science, you get a "Mover and Shaker" honour. This D-Dad who founded not-benefit data chemical group Tidepool was invited to the White Sign of the zodiac in February 2016 to participate in a national wellness control board word and receive a "Health Change Makers" award. Helium also got a candid deal shake and berm-pat from President Obama, captured on photographic camera. Advisable done, Howard!

Most Enterprising D-Tech Startup: Beta Bionics

OK, OK, we get it. The iLET artificial pancreas has been on the microwave radar with its evolving prototypes for the sometime a few days, and we won't likely see this exciting red-hot tech on the commercialize for a of couple of long time to come. But this past twelvemonth proverb the creation of a radical "public benefit potbelly" structure, the first in the Diabetes Community of interests to utilize this hybrid business model allowing a company to prioritize public welfare finished profit to shareholders. Hi, Beta Bionics! This is pretty great, as it allows for Dr. Ed Damiano and his iLET team to not only have the business setup to manufacture and market the ultimate glucagon + insulin closed loop technical school, merely also to pursue commercialization in a way that does good for the D-Community. What a refreshing embrace of the #PatientsOverProfit mantra and definitely an Oscar-worthy melodic theme!

Best Diabetes Celebrity Collaborationism: Beyond Type 1

New powerhouse non-profit Beyond Type 1 wins the D-Oscar for garnering support and involvement from an impressive group of celebrities who happen to be living with T1D — including Victor Garber who's had many an theater and film role including in the Oscar-successful film Argo and a place on Canada's Walk of Fame. This aggroup is taking celeb-infused diabetes advocacy to a whole new level, bringing on names like Garber, Nick Jonas, Sierra Sandison, and Sam Talbot, and they're too creating a whole new "badass" look and position for standing up for diabetes. We love what they're doing, particularly the most recent initiatives focusing connected #DiabetesAccessMatters. Keen stuff with great celeb appeal!

'Google It!' Diabetes Prize: Google

Any it's known atomic number 3 these days, the fact is this search locomotive and data analytics powerhouse is definitely into diabetes. Over the bypast couple years it's teamed up with Dexcom to develop a miniature CGM sensing element and its Life Sciences mathematical group Verily has spun off a joint venture with Sanofi called Unduo that's working along data analytics, software and miniaturized devices to"transform diabetes care." There's also yet that glucose-sensing contact project. And most recently, our D-Community adage years of advocacy pay off when a Google Scribble appear on Nov. 14, 2016 — World Diabetes Day, in recognition of the natal day of insulin co-discoverer Dr. Frederick Banting.

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YES! Totally awesome, Google!!

Most Innovational Reasoning: Bicycle-built-for-two Diabetes Care's t:slim X2

This incoming-generation technology Crataegus oxycantha smel mostly the one as the first sleek, touchscreen t:slim pump, just make no mistake: information technology's outside-the-box thinking hither. The original t:slim X2 pump political platform allows you to remotely update your device software from home, just like you do with your smartphone. No motive to grease one's palms a undiversified young ironware device every time unused untested features become available. For now, this is noncomprehensive to what's FDA approved on the Tandem platform. But presently, we'll have the ability to upload Dexcom G5 CGM compatibility and eventually closed loop functionality — without having to wait for warranties to melt down out and ordination a whole new insulin pump, as we've had to Doctor of Osteopathy historically. Way to come on modernization, Tandem!

Best D-Manner OR Fun Design: GrifGrips

It's rocket skill, people. We profiled this new diabetes small biz that makes the fun GrifGrips stickers, worn over Dexcom sensors, OmniPods and infusion sets every last complete the world (and the body). The D-parents who started this business actually worked for NASA and are true live garden rocket scientists, and they named the spot after their Logos Gryphon, who lives with T1D. Their colorful miscellany of adhesive-cover stickers became every the furor in 2016, with people showing them off all across the DOC, so they've sure enough earned this particular D-Oscar cred.

Biggest State-supported Display of Diabetes (PDD): Caroline Carter

Deja vu, in that we found ourselves once more rooting for a Escape United States candidate World Health Organization happens to have T1D! Yep, the amazing Caroline President Carter from New Hampshire won her United States Department of State pageant and became a contender to represent the USA in the annual beauty competition. Even though she didn't get that top honor, Caroline represented our D-profession asymptomatic by showing off her Dexcom and Medtronic insulin ticker during the contest while also raising the bar on diabetes protagonism for whol types. Definitely awareness-building and shame-dispelling for the undiversified overt!

Most Basis-Breaking New Diabetes Med: Basaglar Insulin

This is the first-ever so follow-on biosimilar version of insulin visible in the United States, approved by the FDA in latterly 2015 and hitting the market in December 2016. While the cost isn't dramatically lour and the insulin legal action itself is fundamentally the same as Sanofi's Lantus (which it's based on), this is a ground-break new formulation of insulin  that leave situated the stage for future biosimilar products and hopefully, sooner sooner than ulterior, ultra-fast-temporary insulin.

The Angry Oscar: Big Insulin Manufacturers

OK, in that respect also has to exist recognition of the most serious, ira-inducing issue of the year: Insulin Affordability. No matter how much they try to avoid blame onto others, the three Wide-ranging Insulin Makers (Lilly, Novo, Sanofi) divvy up a brunt of the responsibility for driving up prices and therefore endangering the lives of people conditional along this dose for selection. Another players are take off of the problem likewise, no doubt, and there is no magic bullet to fix this because you can't just flip a switch and make insulin for free. But the manufacturers have been in the ill-tempered hairs more than ever lately, and for that they make one of these Oscars that atomic number 102 one really wants.

Tomato-In-The-Face Honor: Medtronic

In what it described as a good move allowing people expanded access to insulin pumps (WTF), Medtronic signed a deal with UnitedHealthcare to make its personal products the "preferent mark" of insulin pumps (show: merely brand) offered to UHC plan participants. Lamentable, MedT and UHC: We disagree. This doesn't allow more access, but preferably hinders it. Insulin pumps are not interchangeable commodities, disregardless what approximately investor-types English hawthorn claim. People these life-sustaining devices — that are literally bound to their bodies 24/7 — based on a variety of important features and functions beyond the simple fact that they deliver insulin. We should all encourage excogitation in Greco-Roman deity devices that fit a variety of human needs and lifestyles, to help all style of patients thrive. There is evidence that you'rhenium harming PWDs in the name of turn a profit over patients. Not cool.

The Tamed-in-Uncomplete Oscar: Insurers and Pharmacy Welfare Managers

Following on the above, we're breakage this particular 'award' in half, to give PBMs and Policy Companies each a piece. They're some part-and-parcel of the problems our D-Biotic community faces in the broken health care organisation we give birth. How they operate causes confusion and simply defies logical system, and it needs to cost addressed. (See likewise, #PBMsExposed)

About Influential Handwriting-Writing: Diabetes Patient Advocacy Coalition

Kudos once again to DPAC, the grassroots advocacy group LED away Christel Aprigliano and Bennet Dunlap. With indeed numerous initiatives surfacing over the knightly year, this organization has been a directional force in patient advocacy, offering our D-Community ideas and resources to easy engage in a variety of shipway on multiple issues — from strengthening #DiabetesAccessMatters efforts to protecting our overall healthcare rights. Through with both Chirrup campaigns and quick-action email blasts to lawmakers or insurance CEOs via its Action Center, DPAC assists our biotic community with elevation our knockdown voice quickly and efficiently when it matters most. We highlighted their accomplishments and goals earlier in the year, and look after wise to seeing what comes next from this star radical.

Best Diabetes Advocacy Moment: #BeyondA1C

This was a tough combined, as we had or s serious contenders — #DiabetesAccessMatters, born from the above-noted Medtronic-UHC deal and blossoming into real advocacy efforts and policy discussions; and last-winner #WeAreNotWaiting for the new burst of energy in do-it-yourself D-applied science on the open-source, stoppered loop front. But in the long run, for 2017, the #BeyondA1C movement stands out. Our D-Community saw a groundswell of advocacy on this uncommon issue, from our friends at DPAC and Fulmination and some others who shared their stories directly with the FDA. The big mic drop-off present moment was the FDA September Beyond A1c Workshop, that pronounced the first prison term the regulative agency seriously considered reviewing measures beyond fair-minded our A1C in deciding what mightiness make a dose Oregon gimmick worth approving for diabetes care. And from that confluence, we saw real change at the government dismantle, which leads the States right into our next category…

Best in Diabetes: FDA

For the second year in a row, we have to chip in a top honor to the U.S. FDA. Seriously, the restrictive agency responsible for approving new drugs and devices, plus overseeing the safety of these treatments and tools, has transformed into a faster, more tolerant-centered version of itself in all things diabetes in the past few years.

Just to name a couple of ways: Approbatory the above-noted Medtronic hybrid closed grummet scheme way sooner than anyone due; taking the big step out to looking at Beyond A1C and consider other aspects like glucose variability and "clip in range" American Samoa diabetes ending points, and billowing efficiently connected approving the Dexcom G5 CGM's a "dosing claim" that sanctions it as good sufficiency to use for insulin dosing and treatment decisions, without the mandate to do a substantiative fingerstick showtime! Thank you, FDA, for hearing to our D-Residential district and working to make sure that regulatory insurance keeps up with the realities of diabetes IRL (in real life), and background the stage for CGM to become an even more mainstream standard of care.

Revered Mention: CMS

None one could have predicted that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) would shine by taking the first steps toward allowing continuous glucose monitors (CGMs) to be beaded past Medicare! Yep, this determination in early January 2017 opened the door for broader CGM coverage, and as the agency whole kit and caboodle to commit the billing procedures in site this year, we're thrilled to know that soon adequate our PWD friends ages 65 and older on Medicare will have access to this technology if they take.

Lifespan Achievement Present, DOC-Manner: Kitty Castellini

Many an of us in the Diabetes Online Community testament non forget Kitty, who was a well-known advocate and loyal friend for years. Along with being the longest-surviving pancreas transplant receiver who was essentially cured of T1D for several years, she was the voice behind the 2007-based Diabetes Living Today, one of the early online hubs bringing our community together. Totally of her protagonism wreak glorious countless people in the D-Community, not to mention made us gag and kept us honest and centered on the most relevant topic du jour.

D-Research Friend Lifetime Achievement Award: Alan Thicke

Our biotic community recently said goodbye to role playe and diabetes dad Alan Thicke, widely known for his acting roles over decades that enclosed iconic father Jason Seaver on the '80s sitcom Ontogeny Pains. His son Brennan was diagnosed with T1D at maturat 4 more than tierce decades ago, and among other D-advocacy efforts and TV commercials through the days, Alan founded the Alan Thicke Centre for Diabetes Research in 1989.

Legendary Lifespan D-Accomplishment: Mary Tyler Moore

Goodbye to a legend, to be sure. Our D-Community continues mourning the passing of Mary Tyler Moore in January 2017, recognizing her as one of the first trailblazers in talking about T1D publicly and embrace the "You Can Make out This" mantra. She was diagnosed in her '30s four decades past, just as she was starting out in the starring role on her namesake Blessed Virgin Tyler Moore Show. Along with all of her incredible playing achievements over the long time, Mary was the face of the Juvenile Diabetes Innovation (JDF) from the 1980s to early 2000s, and she denatured the game along raising knowingness and support diabetes research.

CONGRATS to all the WINNERS!

If you're curious, be sure to feel out our prehistoric Diabetes Oscar Winners for 2015 and 2014, too.

What do you think, Friends?