Patients with type 1 diabetes no longer produce their own insulin and therefore often have to inject insulin several times a day. Smart insulin pumps that are on the market in more and more varieties ensure that patients no longer have to. More and more diabetics with type 1 are therefore using a pump that they wear on their body. An insulin pump is a small device that is attached to your body with or without an IV tube. With such an insulin pump, the administration is much more accurate. This is placed through a tiny needle under the skin, which only needs to be inserted once every two to three days.
Target insulin levels
More and more patients are using so-called open source software to ‘control’ the pump, developed by diabetics themselves. This software works on the basis of an algorithm that precisely controls the delivery of insulin by the pump. Research recently published in The New England Journal of Medicine shows that the use of an open-source AID system is demonstrably better than a regular insulin pump with a sensor after 24 weeks. With the use of the smart software, children and adults showed the target insulin values for longer on average. The study involved 49 adults and 48 children with type 1 diabetes.
Insulin pump with sensor
Even before the hybrid closed-loop systems came on the market, a number of patients with type 1 diabetes had already started working with so-called open source automatic insulin delivery systems (AID). Diabetics themselves noticed that this approach worked because they scored good values with it. The research from New Zealand confirms the suspicion of this rapidly growing group. They examined the first open source application that was already developed in 2014 by an American patient. They then compared the functioning of pumps with software with ordinary insulin pumps with a sensor.
Self-developed software catches on
With the smart software-driven pump, participants stayed at their desired glucose level for three hours and 21 minutes longer than those with the simpler pump. In concrete terms, this smart software increases the quality of life of the users. Although diabetics have been using this type of open software for much longer, it is only the first time that its effectiveness has been studied. It is promising that the software developed by diabetics is taking off so well and it is expected that this kind of open technology, developed by patients themselves, will play an increasingly important role in healthcare in the future.
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