Smart Phone Monitors Blood Sugar

The first wearable artificial pancreas platform based on a smart phone has passed early feasibility tests in real-world settings.   Boris Kovatchev, from the University of Virginia (Virginia, USA), and colleagues have devised the Diabetes Assistant, consisting of a sensor placed under the skin that determines the interstitial glucose concentration, and transmits the information to a receiver. The information is processed and a signal is sent to the brain, which tells the pump how much insulin to give.  A continuous glucose monitoring/pump system was placed on each subject and connected to a smart phone device. The patient operated the system via the Diabetes Assistant user interface in open-loop mode for the first 14 hours of study. Then, they switched to closed-loop monitoring for another 28 hours. The system was tested among 20 subjects with type 1 diabetes in real-world settings – where participants wore the device while conducting routine daily activities, exercising, going to restaurants, staying in hotels, etc.  There were no serious adverse effects and no system failures.  The researchers comment that: “The investigational closed-loop system worked correctly 98% of the total possible time from admission to discharge,” demonstrating that: “we now have a good way to control overnight delivery of insulin from minute to minute, cutting down on episodes of hypoglycemia.”