For four years we've lived with Philip, our nickname for my daughter Alissa's insulin pump. He's become a part of the family and we'll say a sad goodbye to him when we return him in a few weeks time.

On Wednesday we finally picked up Patrick, the replacement for Philip from the diabetes nurse at the hospital.

Patrick is a Minimed Paradigm pump capable of many cleverer things than his predecessor and should help Alissa improve her diabetes control and, hence, her health.

Whilst changing from injections to an insulin pump has enabled Alissa to live far more flexibly and enjoy life as a student over the past few years, our diabetic nurse suggested that it was time to try out one of the newer designs of insulin pump to experience further benefits from the latest developments.

Improvements to the Pump

One key improvement is the intelligent bolus wizard. Simply input your current blood glucose level, the amount of carbs you've eaten and it will calculate how much insulin you need to bolus, checks you're happy with the amount its calculate and then proceed to deliver it.

Unless you're a maths whizz, this alone will be helpful as you don't need to make those mental calculations in your head!

You're also able to program the pump to react to different levels of insulin sensitivity at different times of the day. Most control regimes don't take this into account, although it's a well documented medical fact. This could be key factor in helping to improve blood glucose control.

One of the useful aspects of the bolus wizard on the Paradigm insulin pump is that you can set target levels that you'd like to achieve at various times of the day. An example of the use of this would be that at bedtime you might target a slightly higher blood glucose level than during the day, to minimise the risk of hypos. Even if you're aware of your need to run a slightly higher level at nighttime, it's hard to remember this late in the day when you're tired and hungry.

The instructions on the pump are written in English rather than using images and symbols, so it's much easier to learn to use and understand. For example, when you input a low sugar level to the bolus wizard, it will issue a warming that you need to eat before you bolus, a helpful safety factor.

Two other improvements are that the new pump takes ordinary AAA batteries - so that in an emergency you'd be able to purchase them from the nearest store.

Also the new enclosed design means that dust is far less likely to get into the workings of the delivery mechanism.

Alissa tells me that Patrick is also slightly smaller than Phil - another bonus.

Getting on with Patrick

Of course, once we picked up Patrick, we still had to order the necessary supplies, since the sets, cartridges and batteries are all a different design.

Now we're ready to start getting to know how Patrick works and find out just how to get the most out of him.

This new pump has given us an opportunity to re-work Alissa's basal insulin rates which have remained unchanged for several months (apart from a big boost post-Christmas). This will mean recording foods, blood glucose levels and fasting from meals - but should be well worth the information that we obtain to help target insulin rates and sugar levels.

We'll be following the manual carefully as we get used to the new capabilities of the pump, but look forward to a far better level of HBA1C next time we visit the consultant at the hospital. Not only that, but better control of blood glucose should result in Alissa feeling healthier, fitter and full of energy.

We were unsure of the benefits of changing insulin pumps, having been in our comfort zone for several years. Yet, the information that we've discovered about the new technolgies available on insulin pumps has made us wish that we'd made this move much sooner.

The next few weeks will be a time of adjustment and a big learning curve, but I'm hoping that our next visit to the hospital consultant will be a positive one where we'll be able to see and measure the improvements to Alissa's health and blood glucose control.

Can't wait!