Using Medtronic CareLink to Analyze and Improve Diabetes Management

What is Medtronic CareLink?

If you have a Medtronic pump & are from the US, sign up here; or from Germany, sign up here. If you’re from some other beautiful country, click either one and change the country/language setting.

Reports to Run

After following the directions that are already so nicely given from Medtronic to upload your pump and/or CGM data, you can run reports to get more conclusive data and breakdowns. The report I like to use is under Bundles, “How can I view my progress and trends?“. By choosing this bundle, you will see a conclusive breakdown day by day and an overall summary of your data, like a cover sheet.

Analyze the Data

From the cover sheet, you can see an overall summary of your data, with all your data compiled in one overlay. See below:

Just a quick glance at this cover sheet tells me most of my adjustments need to happen during dinner hours. Satisfyingly, my blood sugars are pretty stable overnight and throughout the morning. Lunch could also use some work, but dinner definitely raises some eyebrows.

After identifying issues from the cover sheet, move on to the break down by day to get a more in-depth look at what’s going on to cause unusual happenings.

I like to use colored pens in order to show what’s good, great, bad, and where I give myself directions for the next time something similar happens.

Ok, so now you’re wondering how in the heck I remember everything I did or ate?! I don’t have to remember. I use the app MySugr to record everything that happens with my T1. That makes it SUPER easy to go back and see why my BG spiked to 298 or why my day didn’t have any spikes at all.

I look for anomalies, things that standout from the others. Spikes, lows, but also at days where my BG stayed level all day. That way I can find the root cause and learn from it.

For example: I noticed that my nighttime corrections do not work at my current correction factor. I more than likely need to double my corrections in order for them to work like they should. I also noticed on days that I eat low carb, 50g of carbs or less, my BGs act normal and do not spike.

How else would I know all of this if I didn’t dig for answers?

Improve

Without analyzing your own data, your left to your hunches. Now, I don’t know about you, but I feel much more confident if I check everything out and verify it before I make decisions based on hunches I have.

And this wasn’t a huge time waster either, the whole process only took me about 30 minutes.

Thirty minutes every week or two isn’t much of an investment to greatly improve your diabetes management. 

P.S. Let me know if you do this too, or if you plan to now!