Northerner
Admin (Retired)
- Relationship to Diabetes
- Type 1
From DUK's Facebook page:
Diabetes UK
14 January at 12:48
As the mother of a young child with type 1 diabetes in the 1970s, Dr Sheila Reith - a consultant physician at Southern General Hospital, Glasgow - understood just how difficult diabetes could be.
“In those days you had a glass syringe and you had to reuse steel needles and draw the insulin up from a bottle. It was all very tricky.”
“[Along with colleague, Dr John Ireland] we went around all of the big insulin manufacturers and proposed the idea of a simple, reusable insulin pen device. But, to begin with, none of them were interested."
Her idea was simple but ingenious - a device which took insulin cartridges and could inject with a single push of a button, meaning an end to drawing up insulin from a bottle and make one-handed injections possible.
Finally, after years of working to find a solution, Sheila’s finished product - which was nicknamed ‘Penject’ - became the world’s first commercially available insulin pen, going on sale to the public for less than £20 in the summer of 1983.
And with more than 400,000* people being prescribed insulin every year in the UK - the vast majority of whom use an insulin pen - it’s fair to say that Sheila’s work has gone on to change the lives of literally thousands of people.
Thank you Sheila!
*Actually far more than this, as approximately 900,000 Type 2s are on insulin, in addition to the Type 1s 🙂
Diabetes UK
14 January at 12:48
As the mother of a young child with type 1 diabetes in the 1970s, Dr Sheila Reith - a consultant physician at Southern General Hospital, Glasgow - understood just how difficult diabetes could be.
“In those days you had a glass syringe and you had to reuse steel needles and draw the insulin up from a bottle. It was all very tricky.”
“[Along with colleague, Dr John Ireland] we went around all of the big insulin manufacturers and proposed the idea of a simple, reusable insulin pen device. But, to begin with, none of them were interested."
Her idea was simple but ingenious - a device which took insulin cartridges and could inject with a single push of a button, meaning an end to drawing up insulin from a bottle and make one-handed injections possible.
Finally, after years of working to find a solution, Sheila’s finished product - which was nicknamed ‘Penject’ - became the world’s first commercially available insulin pen, going on sale to the public for less than £20 in the summer of 1983.
And with more than 400,000* people being prescribed insulin every year in the UK - the vast majority of whom use an insulin pen - it’s fair to say that Sheila’s work has gone on to change the lives of literally thousands of people.
Thank you Sheila!
*Actually far more than this, as approximately 900,000 Type 2s are on insulin, in addition to the Type 1s 🙂
