Dexcom (NSDQ:DXCM) CEO Kevin Sayer publicly apologized on Friday for an outage over Thanksgiving weekend that cut off users’ ability to share glucose monitoring data with caregivers and loved ones.
The Dexcom Follow app normally allows users of the company’s G6 continuous glucose monitor to share that data with up to 10 people, according to the company’s website.
“Everyone Dexcom is disappointed at what happened,” Sayer said in a video posted on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. “It is not what you expect from us and certainly not what we expect from ourselves. We can and we will do better.”
Dexcom’s Follow app stopped alerting patients and caregivers of blood glucose highs and lows early in the morning of Saturday, Nov. 30, and the company acknowledged that a large number of patients were affected. Parents of children with Type 1 diabetes rely on the app to alert them if blood sugar levels change drastically, especially overnight. The New York Times reported on one 10-year-old boy whose blood sugar dropped dramatically after he went to sleep on Nov. 29 and that only his moans awakened his brother who alerted their parents.
Most issues with the outage were resolved the following Monday, but some persisted, according to a report by CNBC.
On Friday, Sayer said the problem stemmed from a move to a new cloud service platform, which the company undertook to scale up its systems. Dexcom uses Google’s cloud service and and some technology from Microsoft, the network reported.
“We added some components to our platform that were not configured for optimal performance,” Sayer said in the video. “Those components failed, and when they did, there was disruption to core processes within the platform.”
Dexcom is reviewing its entire system architecture and operational support systems to see what needs changing, he added.
Sayer termed the amount of time that passed between outage beginning and the company notifying patients and caregivers “unacceptable” and said the company is working on an in-app messaging system that will notify patients and caregivers immediately should future problems arise.
Dexcom is also developing a dedicated page for its website that report system how the system is working around-the-0clock and include real-time updates of system interruptions.
