A new review of automated insulin delivery (AID) systems found that the devices “could help more type 1 diabetes patients if [they] become fully automated.”
AID systems like the artificial pancreas have helped people with type 1 diabetes “better manage their blood sugar and improve their overall health,” but the devices still have limitations. The systems are “not yet fully automated,” meaning “users must input their meals and exercise to avoid dangerous spikes or drops in blood-sugar levels;” the devices “work best overnight;” and they are “not yet usable by all patients with type 1 diabetes, including women who are pregnant and older adults.”
The researchers wrote that a key goal for AID systems is to fully automate them so they require “less or no interaction.” Researchers at the UVA Center for Diabetes are “conducting home-based clinical trials testing a system that merges artificial intelligence and advanced model-based algorithms to deliver insulin around meals independently of any user-machine interactions.”
Other institutions are working on developing “artificial intelligence approaches that automatically detect meals and deliver corresponding insulin doses.”
