After decades of having to juggle multiple devices and fingerprick systems to take their own blood sugar readings and use them to calculate insulin dosages, people with diabetes now have access to technologies that will do virtually all of the work for them.
Known as closed-loop insulin delivery systems (or even artificial pancreases), these use blood sugar readings from continuous glucose monitors to automatically adjust the settings on connected insulin pumps. In Europe, a hybrid system powered by artificial intelligence algorithms from Diabeloop is already available, and may soon make its way stateside, thanks to an infusion of 70 million euros (c$75 million) venture capital funding recently announced by the French company.
Diabeloop’s AI picks up blood sugar readings from a connected continuous glucose monitor every five minutes, analyses the data to determine an ideal insulin dosage — factoring in the user’s physiology, medical history and recent meals and exercise — then automatically sends its resulting dosage calculations to an insulin pump. The algorithm is housed on a small handset that connects to both the CGM and insulin pump via Bluetooth and has been designed to integrate with several of Dexcom’s CGM systems and insulin pumps from ViCentra, SOOIL and Roche.
Diabeloop plans to use the funds to continue developing its AI-powered diabetes management technology and to both speed up and expand the commercial rollout of its existing tech around the world.
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