So, for those of you that feel that this is worthy of hacking: Diabetes is one of those diseases that seems right where your average hacker would like it to be. A single value (Blood Glucose Level) which you can read using some sensor and an automated delivery method. Connect A to B using some 30 lines of Python and call it a day. But it is not that simple. The manufacturers of these devices have to go through some pretty strict testing regimes in order to ensure the devices work well <i>when produced in quantity</i>. And that is where the trick lies. Doing this once, for yourself with nobody at risk but you if you fuck up and getting away with it is easy. Doing it repeatably for 10's of millions of people with all your risks analyzed and regulators happy is very, very hard.
It's a damn shame that years after this became a thing we are still waiting for a proper commercial product to hit the market <i>at a reasonable price</i>, I had a male relative with T1 diabetes and it was a complete burden on his life, We have the technology to improve peoples lives markedly (because we already did) but because of what the author mentioned in the article and the lack of "skin in the game" manufacturers are still dicking about and a lot of this only works because those manufacturers couldn't secure a blowjob in a brothel.<p>$8000 is just insane (yes I know FDA approval, testing all that jazz) but there ~1.3m Americans with Type 1 diabetes alone, there is a massive demand for a cost effective product at scale.
I'm curious what the build-your-own-pancreas people have to say about Tidepool's plan to build an iOS app to do the control logic, and at the same time developing standard interfaces to insulin pumps and glucose monitors. Any comments?<p><a href="https://www.tidepool.org/blog/tidepool-loop-medtronic-collaboration" rel="nofollow">https://www.tidepool.org/blog/tidepool-loop-medtronic-collab...</a>
This is absolutely amazing!<p>One thing that's unclear, and perhaps I didn't read carefully enough, is how you're connected to this system.<p>Do you wear it? Or are you only connected while sitting, sleeping, etc?