Advanced families are starting to use homemade devices in the fight against diabetes
Medical companies are working on the creation of an artificial pancreas. But for many families, the wait has become too long.
Third-grader Andrew Calabrese (Andrew Calabrese) does not part with his backpack anywhere when he is in a school located in the San Diego area. The backpack is filled not only with textbooks - it also has its artificial pancreas.
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The device, which has long been considered the Holy Grail of type I diabetes treatment technologies, was not assembled by a well-known medical company. He was not approved by state regulators.
His father gathered Andrew.
Jason Calabrese, a programmer by profession, followed the instructions found online — he reworked his insulin pump to automatically give his son the right dose of hormone in response to fluctuations in blood sugar levels. With the approval of the family doctor, Andrew now wears an improvised device and to school.
The Calabrese family is not alone: ​​more than 50 people have soldered, assembled and programmed such devices for themselves or for their children. Systems (known as closed-loop systems, closed-loop systems) have been studied for decades, but advances in technology for real-time monitoring of sugar levels have made them possible in practice.
The FDA has made it a priority to review and agree on such devices and several companies are already working on them. But this process can take years, and technically advanced families have begun to take matters into their own hands.
At the very beginning, Jason was very worried about the safety of his product. He collected it for 2 months and spent another week on debugging. At first he used it only on weekends and at night. When he was convinced of his reliability, he decided that it would be irresponsible not to use it on his 9-year-old son in full.
“Diabetes is dangerous in itself. Insulin is dangerous. I believe that what we do improves his quality of life and reduces his risk, ”said the 41-year-old father.
The FDA has the authority to regulate the activities of medical companies and doctors. But as long as people conjure insulin pumps themselves and do not sell / distribute them, the federal agency is bound hand in hand.
More than a million Americans live with type I diabetes, an autoimmune disease in which the pancreas stops producing insulin, the hormone needed to turn sugar into energy. An increase in blood sugar levels has serious long-term consequences - from kidney failure to coma. The hope for an artificial pancreas is that the algorithm will be able to competently dose insulin according to the indications of a subcutaneous sensor measuring sugar level.
The amateur project used by the Calabrese family, the OpenAPS (Open Artificial Pancreas System), was started by Dana Lewis, 27, living in Seattle. Dana, a type I diabetic, began using the system in December 2014 as an experiment on herself. After months of keeping a journal of her project on Twitter, she caught the attention of many who needed such a decision.
The main obstacle was that it was necessary for those who wished to assemble the device themselves. Dana and others give advice, but in the end it’s everyone’s responsibility to know how to debug the device. So, the Bay Area cardiologist masters programming to assemble a device for his one-year-old child, who was diagnosed in March.
The system includes a not very modern insulin pump, a radio module that communicates with a constantly working glucose sensor, a laptop computer on the board, and a battery pack. An insulin pump looks like a pager-sized block — it is committed to constantly injecting insulin in the right doses through a catheter under the skin. The development was the development of another open project, in which caretakers of diabetics were looking for a way to remotely monitor their blood sugar levels.
The size of the installation varies - the one that wears Andrew Calabrese, step by step decreased from the size of the box for shoes to the size of the case for headphones. Now the child is wearing an insulin pump and a belt computer.
Jason Calabrese specifies that the development will not become a universal remedy - first of all, because the dosage of insulin in accordance with the eaten is still calculated manually. In addition, the system is prone to technology flaws, such as rare pump failures and catheter blockages. But for all that, the father concludes, the algorithm is more disciplined. “People for this are not well adapted; this is the lot of machines. ”
Third-grader Andrew Calabrese (Andrew Calabrese) does not part with his backpack anywhere when he is in a school located in the San Diego area. The backpack is filled not only with textbooks - it also has its artificial pancreas.
')
The device, which has long been considered the Holy Grail of type I diabetes treatment technologies, was not assembled by a well-known medical company. He was not approved by state regulators.
His father gathered Andrew.
Jason Calabrese, a programmer by profession, followed the instructions found online — he reworked his insulin pump to automatically give his son the right dose of hormone in response to fluctuations in blood sugar levels. With the approval of the family doctor, Andrew now wears an improvised device and to school.
The Calabrese family is not alone: ​​more than 50 people have soldered, assembled and programmed such devices for themselves or for their children. Systems (known as closed-loop systems, closed-loop systems) have been studied for decades, but advances in technology for real-time monitoring of sugar levels have made them possible in practice.
The FDA has made it a priority to review and agree on such devices and several companies are already working on them. But this process can take years, and technically advanced families have begun to take matters into their own hands.
At the very beginning, Jason was very worried about the safety of his product. He collected it for 2 months and spent another week on debugging. At first he used it only on weekends and at night. When he was convinced of his reliability, he decided that it would be irresponsible not to use it on his 9-year-old son in full.
“Diabetes is dangerous in itself. Insulin is dangerous. I believe that what we do improves his quality of life and reduces his risk, ”said the 41-year-old father.
The FDA has the authority to regulate the activities of medical companies and doctors. But as long as people conjure insulin pumps themselves and do not sell / distribute them, the federal agency is bound hand in hand.
More than a million Americans live with type I diabetes, an autoimmune disease in which the pancreas stops producing insulin, the hormone needed to turn sugar into energy. An increase in blood sugar levels has serious long-term consequences - from kidney failure to coma. The hope for an artificial pancreas is that the algorithm will be able to competently dose insulin according to the indications of a subcutaneous sensor measuring sugar level.
The amateur project used by the Calabrese family, the OpenAPS (Open Artificial Pancreas System), was started by Dana Lewis, 27, living in Seattle. Dana, a type I diabetic, began using the system in December 2014 as an experiment on herself. After months of keeping a journal of her project on Twitter, she caught the attention of many who needed such a decision.
The main obstacle was that it was necessary for those who wished to assemble the device themselves. Dana and others give advice, but in the end it’s everyone’s responsibility to know how to debug the device. So, the Bay Area cardiologist masters programming to assemble a device for his one-year-old child, who was diagnosed in March.
The system includes a not very modern insulin pump, a radio module that communicates with a constantly working glucose sensor, a laptop computer on the board, and a battery pack. An insulin pump looks like a pager-sized block — it is committed to constantly injecting insulin in the right doses through a catheter under the skin. The development was the development of another open project, in which caretakers of diabetics were looking for a way to remotely monitor their blood sugar levels.
The size of the installation varies - the one that wears Andrew Calabrese, step by step decreased from the size of the box for shoes to the size of the case for headphones. Now the child is wearing an insulin pump and a belt computer.
Jason Calabrese specifies that the development will not become a universal remedy - first of all, because the dosage of insulin in accordance with the eaten is still calculated manually. In addition, the system is prone to technology flaws, such as rare pump failures and catheter blockages. But for all that, the father concludes, the algorithm is more disciplined. “People for this are not well adapted; this is the lot of machines. ”
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/372211/
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