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Earlier this month the diabetes world came to Australia for the IDF World Diabetes Congress (WDC) in Melbourne. It's hard to describe just how massive the conference was - over 10,000 delegates from 140 countries including researchers, health care professionals, policy makers and people with diabetes. The huge scientific program had 7 streams and addressed issues such as basic and clinical science; education and integrated care; and living with diabetes.

With such a unique and important diabetes event happening in Australia, we couldn't pass up the chance to be there. T1DN had a stand in the exhibition hall, and also sent along Kate Gilbert and Mel Seed of Twice Diabetes as media reps.

We had a fantastic time chatting with people in the exhibition area, catching up with old friends (great to see Diabetes Counselling Online getting lots of interest at their stand) and making new ones. Our chocolate pancreases and syringe-shaped pens were a huge hit, and we got plenty of interest in the updated version of the Starter Kit for newly diagnosed adults.

It was interesting to meet delegates from all over the world - we chatted to people from Connected in Motion, who are the Canadian version of HypoActive, and Children with Diabetes, a US non-profit group who run camps for children with T1D and their parents. More humbling was meeting delegates from developing countries, especially those from Africa. While T1DN advocates for access to the best possible resources for diabetes management, delegates from these countries are setting up centres to make sure people with T1D have access to insulin at all.

Over in the conference sessions, some health professionals still used the frustrating and inaccurate term 'non-compliant' to describe those of us who aren't managing diabetes optimally (we suspect that's most of us, at one time or another!) so the message about appropriate language still hasn't quite gotten through.

On a positive note, it was encouraging to see lots of engaged consumers at the conference adding to the conversation about diabetes. This is not something that is present at a lot of medical conferences and while there is a long way to go it was a great start. Matt Cameron has some suggestions for how to improve on his 'Insulin pumps need tetris' blog.

One of the sessions on the development of an artificial pancreas was particularly encouraging. A number of trials have been done on systems that work safely, although there's still a way to go before it is convenient, portable and affordable. It's gradual, but progress is happening!

Riva Greenberg from Diabetes Stories reported on her experience and Diabetes Counselling Online produced a YouTube video of images and 'words for diabetes'.

Kate and Mel will be writing up some of their WDC experiences for us, so stay tuned, and see below for our road test of HbA1c meters in the exhibition hall.

To coincide with the World Diabetes Congress, we launched our new, rebranded website. Take a look at www.t1dn.org.au and see what you think! A big shout out to Todd and Jo at Humming Group for doing such a fabulous job to a tight deadline.

We are really happy with the results and it's a credit to the hard work put in by a lot of T1DN volunteers. While it was tough being without a web presence for a number of months, the new look has been worth the wait.

Also available via the web page is the revised and updated Starter Kit for newly diagnosed adults with type 1 (or those wanting a bit of an update). The Starter Kit seeks to provide a sense of what living with type 1 is actually like, tackling the good and bad; funny and frightening; reality and myths. Check it out online, or if you're a health professional wanting hard copies, email us with your address and we'll send them out to you.

We plan to add new content to the website over the next 12 months. Want to contribute something? Have feedback about the site or ideas for content? Email us, drop over to our Facebook page, or leave a comment on Reality Check.

'Point of care' tests are offered by some health services within Australia, and provide a highly convenient finger prick test that measures your HbA1c at the time of your appointment. It sounds good, but unfortunately the meters are not widespread due to inaccuracy when compared to the lab pathology test.

Four exhibitors brought point of care HbA1c meters to their WDC booth. We thought this was a great opportunity for a T1DN road test. Two T1DN committee members sacrificed their fingers and did the rounds of all four stands to compare each meter. Below are our highly unscientific but interesting results!

	Person A	Person B
Standard lab pathology test	7.5%   (Dec 13)	6.8%   (Nov 13)
Booth 1	6.9%	6.7%
Booth 2	7.2%	7.8%
Booth 3	7.5%	7.0%
Booth 4	7.8%	7.5%

Booth 1's meter was not yet approved by the TGA in Australia. It gave results we liked very much, but were perhaps a bit lower than reality. Booth 3 used a meter very common in Australian clinics, which was spot on for one of us and close for the other. Booth 4 also did cholesterol testing, which required filling a large capillary tube from a finger prick - not for the faint-hearted! We think the amount of finger squeezing required to get enough blood may have contaminated the sample. Interestingly, two booths wiped away the first drop of blood, claiming it could contain 'cell debris or contaminants' which might change the result. The other two booths didn't do this.

So what conclusions can we draw from this testing? Well, the industry standard for accuracy is within 2-3% of the actual result. For a HbA1c of 7.5%, this is +/- about 0.2%. In other words, if your HbA1c is really 7.5%, the result can be 7.3%-7.7% and still be considered accurate. Booths 2-4, which used meters already in use in Australia, were not too far off (except booth 2 for one of us, which shows that results can be variable). However, the lab pathology test is still the gold standard, and it looks like 'point of care' tests are only an estimate.

If you want to learn more about HbA1c, check out our HbA1c explained article on the T1DN web page.