The artificial pancreas
You may have already heard about the JDRF artificial pancreas project.
They're working on developing a closed loop system where readings from a continuous glucose monitor (CGM) are used to directly control an insulin pump. Currently those of us with CGMs and insulin pumps have got an open loop system, we need to take the readings from the CGM and decide whether we need insulin or food.Clearly this is a difficult problem to solve. How would such a system know if you were sick? What would it do when you're about to exercise? How would it handle changing insulin needs for children who are growing?
Now you have a chance to learn more about this project. On July 21st and 22nd the FDA, NIH and JDRF are holding a public workshop 'focused upon the state of the art in the research and development of an artificial pancreas'.
The meeting will be in Bethesda Maryland at the NIH campus. Building 38A on this map. Space is limited so you do need to register.
I would love to go to this workshop, but I'll be out of the country.
Can I ask you a favor? If you go the workshop can you write up a summary of what's discussed and post it to the blogosphere?
Attribution: The illustration above is from the JDRF site.
Labels: artificial, FDA, JDRF, meeting, pancreas, research
posted by Bernard @ 10:36 AM
11 Comments:
The agenda is here:
http://www.blsmeetings.net/artificialpancreas08/agenda.pdf
I am going to look into it.
It needs a third component that has glucose in it. That way it can mirror your body's entire reaction, when you exercise your body pumps out more glucose, it doesn't wait for your blood sugar to drop too far from the insulin it did earlier.
bernard,
we did a chat with aaron kowalski a while ago here is the transcript http://diabetestalkfest.ning.com/forum/topic/show?id=855504%3ATopic%3A33315
Dear Bernard,
I wanted to thank you for your words on our blog, but actually I'm sitting here, sleepy eyed on about an hour of sleep, but I just feel compelled to connect with you.
My mother in law has diabetes and though all health issues facing our race are close to my heart, this one has a very personal face for me.
I have begun studying diabetes and possible natural treatments with great fervor. I have come across some things which blow my mind and hope that maybe I might have something in my library that you haven't come across and could at least make things easier for you.
Have you seen the book Gut and Psychology Syndrome? It's aimed at autism spectrum disorders, but I think that that is truly unfortunate because I fully believe in it's ability to bring amazing healing to everyone. It isn't easy, but neither is dis-ease ;-)
I wish you the very best, and hope that we might "see you around" again. The goal in VT is to be able to fully support anyone and all of their health and happiness needs. Perhaps someday you will be able to join us and the envy can be lost in a current of bliss.
xo
I wish I could attend. Would you mind creating an Event about this on TuDiabetes, Bernard? I think there may be lots of folks interested in attending.
I wrote about this back in March (see here for details), but I'm not certain I'll be available to attend, but as I noted, I do think its important to have patient representation at these meetings. I've summarized a few things that need further attention:
What are some of the issues that need resolution? While many people claim insurance coverage is the #1 issue, I think that will come when solid evidence of the device's value is proven. But the poor level of accuracy at low (hypoglycemic) levels is a HUGE issue, along with the large vascillations in glycemia levels due to instable synthetic insulin analogues. To my original point, why is it that science has little (if any) problem developing testing equipment (test strips, meters, etc.) that can accurately test at levels of up to 1200 mg/dL (66.6 mmol/L), but cannot get anything under 70 mg/dL (3.8 mmol/L) accurate within 5%? Surely, this is just as important for a whole host of different reasons, yet for whatever reason, the issue barely registers in importance.
Then there is the issue of where to put all this crap they expect us to wear, and the subcutaneous tissue damage which is accompanied by all of it (it DOES occur, thus leading to erratic absorption of insulin and therefore unstable pharmacokinetics). Remember, children are smaller, and have less room to wear all of these gizmos, yet they are considered a primary target audience for all of these things.
Do you think I should try and get Dr. Kowalski to come chat again?
Gina
It might be useful to hear from him in early August after the workshop is completed. I'd be most interested to hear a summary of what went on.
I will email him and ask if it is possible that would be cool if he can. I will keep you posted.
Bernard
I trust you have seen this but just in case you have not:
http://videocast.nih.gov/summary.asp?live=6630
This is the first time I've come across an artificial pancreas. Lets hope it can help all those diabetics. I posted a blog at http://www.upgradeyourbody.com/organs/
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