The Artificial Pancreas For Diabetics Is Nearly Here

the_newsbeagle writes: It's the tech that type 1 diabetics have long been waiting for: An implanted "closed-loop" system that monitors a person's blood-sugar level and adjusts injections from an insulin pump. Such a system would liberate diabetics from constant self-monitoring and give parents of diabetic children peace of mind. Thanks to improvements in glucose sensors and control algorithms, the first artificial pancreas systems are now in clinical trials.

Comments

Awesome

[MightyMartian]

Pretty amazing advance. Now I wish they'd do the same for the thyroid. My wife had hers removed due to cancer nine years ago, and has to manage her thyroid levels via synthetic thyroid hormone pills, which, while effective, are crude and require regular testing to make sure she's not hyperthyroidic or hyothyroidic.

Re:No thanks.

[CastrTroy]

My understanding is that there isn't a direct relation between what's being read from the sensor and what is actually in the blood. The glucose sensor just senses the amount of glucose in the blood. So if it gives a reading of x, and then gives a dose of y units of insulin to counteract, it doesn't know that you're going to start running in 1 minute which will decrease the glucose levels further than it expected to based on the amount of insulin delivered. So, now you're going to be low on glucose. The only way to do that is to add glucose to the blood. Assuming this system does this, it can bring the blood sugar back up. However, it also doesn't know about the chocolate bar you just ingested which will again add glucose to your system in the near future.

For a system like this to work, it has to make constant tiny adjustments to your insulin and glucose levels to ensure that it always remains in a certain safe zone. Scott Hanselman did a pretty good write-up a few years back. It's really kind of depressing when you look into the current state of affairs. The diabetes industry seems to be more concerned with making money than actually solving people's problems.