For people living with type 1 diabetes, it pays to be good at math. Keeping blood glucose in a healthy range requires a constant stream of calculations: counting the carbs in each meal, and then finding the right dose of insulin to balance them out. But new clinical trial results from an automated insulin delivery system from Beta Bionics suggest that computation can be reliably outsourced to a machine — potentially putting better blood glucose control in the hands of more patients.
In the last several years, automated insulin delivery has helped many patients with type 1 diabetes avoid harmful dips and surges in their blood sugar. Sometimes called an ‘artificial pancreas,’ the systems, aided by a glucose sensor, algorithmically determine insulin doses that are delivered continuously through a pump. But the systems aren’t perfectly autonomous: Users still have to manually input the carb counts of their meals before eating, so the system can deliver the right dose of medication.
Beta Bionics’ system, the iLet bionic pancreas, takes one more step toward full automation. Instead of reporting carb counts, users input whether an upcoming meal has more, less, or the same number of carbs than normal. “Then the system learns what they mean by that, how much insulin they need, and it will automatically give a portion of that insulin upfront in response to that announcement,” said Massachusetts General Hospital’s Steven Russell, who co-developed the system before it was licensed to Beta Bionics.
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