The Diabetes Assistant: A Smartphone-Based System for Real-Time Control of Blood Glucose

Abstract

Type 1 Diabetes Mellitus (T1DM) is an autoimmune disease in which the insulin-producing beta cells of the pancreas are destroyed and insulin must be injected daily to enable the body to metabolize glucose. Standard therapy for T1DM involves self-monitoring of blood glucose (SMBG) several times daily with a blood glucose meter and injecting insulin via a syringe, pen or insulin pump. An "Artificial Pancreas" (AP) is a closed-loop control system that uses a continuous glucose monitor (CGM), an insulin pump and an internal algorithm to automatically manage insulin infusion to keep the subject's blood glucose within a desired range. Although no fully closed-loop AP systems are currently commercially available there are intense academic and commercial efforts to produce safe and effective AP systems. In this paper we present the Diabetes Assistant (DiAs), an ultraportable AP research platform designed to enable home studies of Closed Loop Control (CLC) of blood glucose in subjects with Type 1 Diabetes Mellitus. DiAs consists of an Android (Google Inc., Mountain View, CA, USA) smartphone equipped with communication, control and user interface software wirelessly connected to a continuous glucose monitor and insulin pump. The software consists of a network of mobile applications with well-defined Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) running

Embedded Control in Wearable Medical Devices: Application to the Artificial Pancreas

“…The data acquisition unit can be either a standalone monitoring or displaying device (as for example seen in Figure 1, Configuration A) or it can be integrated into the insulin pump (see Configuration B). In Configuration A, the data acquisition unit wirelessly sends information to the handheld controller [22]. The measured glucose values and insulin treatment can be saved on a secure virtual cloud [36,37] for analysis and evaluation by the patient and their healthcare provider.…”

“…A future design aim is that the application can be employed concurrently with other applications run by the user. To this end, a smartphone-based AP platform (currently, for the development phase of the Diabetes Assistant (DiAS) platform, the smartphone is employed as a dedicated controller, and no other phone-related functions are permitted) (DiAS; University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, USA) has been developed [22] and evaluated in outpatient studies [10,[23][24][25][26]. Extended studies involving a two-month evening and night closed-loop control study have also been performed [27].…”

A Digital Ecosystem of Diabetes Data and Technology

“…85 To date, the development of artificial pancreas (AP) technology has been one of the major drivers for integrating data to improve diabetes management, as years of research and inpatient studies have recently progressed to numerous outpatient studies of systems wherein patients' blood glucose levels are under automated closed-loop control via glycemiaresponsive delivery of insulin or insulin and glucagon. 86,87 Connected consumer devices play a role in the expansion of this work, for example the use of a smartphone as a hub for a "mobile medical network," serving as both the computing platform for AP algorithms (wirelessly receiving CGM data and controlling hormone delivery) and the user interface (UI) for the patient, 88,89 and the smartphone's inherent connectivity to the cloud facilitates the monitoring of AP study participants as part of a telemedicine infrastructure. [90][91][92] As such, a smartphone-based, cloud-connected AP system may be augmented by data from many of the sources noted previously, both to better understand influencers of glycemia in real world settings, and to drive the adaptation of more individualized AP control algorithms.…”

Real Time Monitoring of Human Body Vital Signs using Bluetooth and WLAN

“…Changes in light intensity are used to check the changes in volume level of blood which is very helpful in cardio vascular systems. Output voltages from this sensor module during the cardiac cycles will be converted into beats per minute through microcontroller board (Arduino UNO) [4]. …”

“…finger tips, ear lobes etc.) [4]. Fig.1 shows the principle of measuring heart rate of a person using technique of photoplethysmography.…”