Insulet partners with Calm to address mental health burden of diabetes management
Insulet (PODD), the maker of the Omnipod wearable insulin patch, has teamed up with mental health app Calm to launch a suite of free mindfulness resources tailored specifically to people living with diabetes, in what the companies describe as Calm's first integrated content partnership with a medical device manufacturer.
The "Mind in Range" initiative includes guided meditations, breathing exercises, and a new Calm Sleep Story narrated by Lila Moss, a fashion model and Type 1 diabetes patient who serves as an advocate for the community. The collaboration is designed to address what Insulet describes as a significant and underserved mental health dimension of diabetes care.
The company cites data showing that people with diabetes are 20% more likely to develop anxiety than the general population, while approximately 80% experience some form of burnout from the emotional demands of daily disease management. A further 66% of patients and 46% of caregivers report poor-quality sleep driven by diabetes-related stress and anxiety. Research also indicates that people with diabetes make roughly 180 incremental decisions each day — a cognitive load that Insulet's chief growth officer Manoj Raghunandanan said compounds the psychological toll of the condition.
"Partnering with Calm recognizes the emotional dimension of diabetes and expands the support we provide beyond physical outcomes," Raghunandanan said, adding that reducing the "mental load" associated with the disease had become a strategic priority for the company since he joined as its first chief growth officer last August.
Chris Mosunic, chief clinical officer at Calm Health — the company's clinical healthcare offshoot — emphasized that the link between emotional stress and blood glucose regulation made the partnership a logical one. "If you get stressed, your blood sugar is going to go up," he said. "You can't separate the nervous system from the metabolism. They're interconnected." He added that while Omnipod's technological advances in insulin delivery had moved rapidly, clinical understanding of the emotional dimensions of diabetes management had lagged behind.
Calm, which launched in 2012 as a meditation app before expanding into broader mental health programming, relies on subject matter experts and patient feedback sessions when developing disease-specific content. The company previously partnered with the Mayo Clinic in 2023 to design digital mental health tools for cancer patients navigating anxiety and depression. Mosunic said the Insulet collaboration nonetheless represents something new — a pharmaceutical and medtech partner "leaning into the mental health aspects in a really big way."
The announcement comes at a moment of commercial momentum for Insulet. Revenue from its Omnipod product portfolio rose 36.9% in the first quarter of 2026 to $758.4 million, the company reported. CEO Ashley McEvoy has credited a broadening brand awareness campaign — including a product placement on the revival of ABC's medical comedy "Scrubs" — with drawing new users and expanding prescriber reach beyond the company's direct sales force.