Artificial pancreas likely to be available by 2018

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Northerner

Admin (Retired)
Relationship to Diabetes
Type 1
The artificial pancreas -- a device which monitors blood glucose in patients with type 1 diabetes and then automatically adjusts levels of insulin entering the body -- is likely to be available by 2018, conclude authors of a paper inDiabetologia (the journal of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes). Issues such as speed of action of the forms of insulin used, reliability, convenience and accuracy of glucose monitors plus cybersecurity to protect devices from hacking, are among the issues that are being addressed.

Currently available technology allows insulin pumps to deliver insulin to people with diabetes after taking a reading or readings from glucose meters, but these two components are separate. It is the joining together of both parts into a 'closed loop' that makes an artificial pancreas, explain authors Dr Roman Hovorka and Dr Hood Thabit of the University of Cambridge, UK. "In trials to date, users have been positive about how use of an artificial pancreas gives them 'time off' or a 'holiday' from their diabetes management, since the system is managing their blood sugar effectively without the need for constant monitoring by the user," they say.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/06/160630214503.htm
 
Good stuff. 🙂 Still faces the same problem though which is highlighted in the text in that the speed of injected insulin from the device cannot keep up with what you have eaten once the glucose from that food has hit your bloodstream (measured by the CGM) - it would be playing catch up all the time.
 
Tech is getting better every day 😎😎😎 Medtronic ?
 
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