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Day 1: 17,500 attendees, 12,800 health care professionals and 2,000 presented papers. The ADA Conference has started!
This year the 67th scientific sessions are taking place in Chicago. They just started, and I am writing to you from the press room at the convention at the McCormick Place Convention Center in downtown Chicago right on Lake Michigan. A couple of people told me that this is the largest convention center in the world, and I believe it. The ADA needs the space for the throngs of diabetes professionals who are here from all over the world.Already on this first day of the convention that runs through Monday the ADA press office tells me that more than 16,000 people are here and registered. And the convention will only begin in a few minutes as I write...
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Day 2: New information, old friends and A1C.
This year what is exciting me the most is the exhibits of new and continuing products to help those of us with diabetes. More than 4,000 exhibitors are here to show off 231 exhibits. Of these, the most exciting for me so far has to be the exhibit of A1C testing. The booth for the Metrika home A1C test, called the A1CNow, offered us immediate A1C results, and I took advantage of the offer yesterday during the second day of the convention.
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Day 3: Talking about incretins
While Chicago is in fact hardly as windy as my hometown of Boulder, Colorado, I was blown away not only by the shear size and efficiency of the Second City, its other and more appropriate moniker for this still first-rate city. Beyond that, a powerful presentation at the end of the third day concluded my active participation in the convention and was a real blow-out for me. Novo Nordisk hosted the presentation, which it billed as an interactive discussion about the incretins, which include the GLP-1 mimetics and the DPP-4 inhibitors. These are the two newest classes of diabetes drugs. Only one drug in each class is available yet: Byetta is the first GLP-1, and Januvia is the first DPP-4.
