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Open Source Artificial Pancreas Helps Engineer's Son Survive With Type 1 Diabetes
HughPickens.com writes: More than one million Americans live with Type 1 diabetes, an autoimmune condition in which the pancreas stops producing insulin, a hormone needed to turn sugar into energy. Now Kate Linebaugh writes at the WSJ that Jason Calabrese, a software engineer, followed instructions that had been shared online to hack an old insulin pump so it could automatically dose the hormone in response to his son's blood-sugar levels. The Calabreses aren't alone. More than 50 people have soldered, tinkered and written software to make such devices for themselves or their children. Initially, Calabrese worried about the safety of the do-it-yourself project. He built it over two months, and spent weeks testing. At first, he only tried it out on his son on weekends and at night. Once it performed well enough, he said it felt irresponsible not to use it on his 9-year-old son. "Diabetes is dangerous anyway. Insulin is dangerous. I think what we are doing is actually improving that and lowering the risk," says Calabrese. The home-built project that the Calabreses followed is known as OpenAPS. The only restriction of the project is users have to put the system together on their own. As long as the people tinkering with their insulin pumps aren't selling or distributing them, the FDA doesn't have a legal means to stop it. The system involves an outdated insulin pump that communicates with a small radio stick connected to a continuous glucose monitor, a computer motherboard and a battery pack. It is an outgrowth of another open-source project where caregivers developed software to remotely monitor blood-sugar levels. The size of the homemade system varies, and the one that Calabrese carries has come down from the size of a small shoebox to that of a headphone case. He wears his insulin pump and glucose monitor on his belt. "It is clearly for people who have some expertise in computer programming," says Bruce Buckingham. "What it shows is that people are anxious to get something going."
That can be one of the causes of type 2 diabetes , however genetics plays a far bigger role.
Type1 is NOT because of sugar and carbs.
http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/type-1-diabetes/basics/causes/con-20019573
You may as well be saying vaccines cause autism.
It's because of too much sugar and carbs. Get rid of the junk food!
You are only partly right. As a type 1 diabetic using an insulin pump, I have minimized my carbs in my diet and have found that increasing muscle mass and increasing energy by reducing my dependance on carbohydrates for energy has improved my life, however.. It has not magically given me the ability to produce insulin on my own. Therein lies the need for a system like this for type 1 diabetics.
I agree with your position, because I have dealt with and adjusted my lifestyle in terms of what you are saying but for type 1 diabetics that is only a part of the challenge to surviving with this condition.
Managing blood sugar with an insulin pump is a full time job and having a level of automation that you can observe and manage and live a somewhat normal life is a godsend. I would not expect you to understand, but you have full opportunity to read up on it by reading the fine article.
have a nice day!
I know Dana Lewis, so I can probably tell you (the AC, not the reply) more about this system than the article does. There are safeguards around "use all its insulin at once" in the pump controller itself, that the OpenAPS system *cannot* override. The OpenAPS system effectively automates the "pushing the button" actions on the pump that are normally done manually by the patient who is reading his/her glucose meter and doing some fairly complicated math in his/her head to figure out the proper dose. It's an API client, nothing more.
The pump itself has safeguards against overdosing, either via manual control or APS control. And if there's a failure of the OpenAPS system, it simply reverts to manual control, which patients have been doing for years.
In type 2, you have INCREASED insulin production, but also greatly increased insulin resistance, leading to a relative insulin deficiency despite the absolute increase. - a physician