Artificial Pancreas: What?s in a Name?

[Northerner]

“Artificial pancreas” is a term that can make the T1 community sit up and take notice. It certainly did after a round of recent reports about Medtronic’s new MiniMed 530g pump/CGM. The pump and system, which features a Low Glucose Suspend feature that shuts off basal insulin if blood sugar readings gets too low, has been billed by Medtronic as an artificial pancreas. Most major news outlets (the Wall Street Journal, Reuters, and even Insulin Nation) called the new device and system an artificial pancreas, as well.

But not everyone in the T1 community agreed with that terminology. Within an hour, Insulin Nation columnist “Iron Andy” Holder weighed in via email, saying that he thinks the device doesn’t qualify for the term.

http://insulinnation.com/303220/

Not just me then! 🙄 Personally, I think it might detract from efforts to raise funds for the true AP if people believe it already exists. I've also seen it referred to as a 'cure', which is even worse

 

[everydayupsanddowns]

At the INPUT event on Saturday Prof John Pickup (essentially the man who invented insulin pumps) was speaking about the future of D technology and naturally the AP came up.

His view is that the progress is good but we are a long way... a very long way from anything that could really be called an artificial pancreas. We don't even have accurate and immediate enough CGM tech for that, let alone rapid enough insulins. Overnight results (in real-world/non research-lab settings) are engouraging, but that's only really the easy part of the story of AP.

We've had the Veo in the UK for years and it *does* demonstrate benefits of integrating pump/CGM and low-glucose suspend, but the eventual FDA approval of a (only very slightly updated) US version and it's overexcitable launch PR has been mishandled IMO.

 

[HOBIE]

I hope they keep working to make it a real ! Pump tech is getting better 😎