LCA2019 - Day 1 proper
A beautiful day in Christchurch... one attendee claims the temperature has hit 39o Not so sure about that but yes, it is pretty warm... warm enough to cause stress and stress does funny things to people with Type 1 diabetes so what better way to start the day with a keynote speech from Dana Lewis from The Open Artificial Pancreas System Project.
The OpenAPS project started in 2015 to help people with type 1 diabetes to better manage and integrate their blood sugar monitors with their insulin pumps. At the time theses devices were separate units that did not communicate with each other so the user had to read one device, perform a calculation based on a standard algorithm, add a variable input based on what they might be doing in the next few hours and set the insulin pump accordingly... not an ideal process by any means and therefore prone to inaccuracy.
Further details are available on the OpenAPS site but suffice to say the system reads data from the blood sugar monitor, calculates the insulin rate to keep the blood sugar level within the target range and sets the pump accordingly... with spectacular results! A fantastic effort especially when you consider that there still isn't an approved, fully automated commercial system available.