on facebook this news from tandem came out about the next generations of pumps with the G6. here is the link
2 Likes
Thanks for sharing! So much news about progress in closing the loop, yet it feels like it’s still so far away from the consumer! Days seem like weeks when it comes to this stuff!
im still confused on how closed loop works to be honest. i think if i ever get a pump that has it ill understand it a wee bit better
I think one of the problems with closed loop is often the details are hidden and/or confusing. The open source closed loops would of course expose the internals although they may still be confusing. Based on postings, the Medtronic version is quite obscure and requires substantial assumptions and deductions to know what is really going on behind the scenes.
Until Tandem actually releases their version, we will not know how easy or difficult it will be to understand how it is doing what it is doing.
From a 50,000 foot picture, what the closed loop should do is increase the insulin when it predicts you will have a BG going higher and outside your range and decrease your insulin when it predicts you will have a BG going lower and below your range.
As with many things, the details of how it is actually accomplished is where confusion and/or difficulty may come into play. Reality is not as simple as a one sentence blurb.
So this is basically the system? it acts like a pancreas?
It acts similar to a healthy pancreas in that it responds to changes in blood glucose with appropriate levels of insulin. The pancreas, however, is much more refined and capable than any man made loop will ever be. The pancreas releases insulin internally and its onset, peak, and duration are all much shorter than any insulin delivered subcutaneously. The pancreas also secretes other hormones, like glucagon, which help control glucose metabolism.
The automated insulin dosing system I use, Loop, simply modifies basal insulin delivery. It can add, subtract, or stand pat with the pump’s programmed basal rate. The incredible thing about Loop is the level of attention it pays to this process. It makes a decision every five minutes about basal insulin delivery. That’s 288 decisions every day, day in, day out. This is particularly effective overnight when I cannot and will not do that job.
When I first heard that these loop systems just adjusted basal delivery, I was skeptical that these adjustments could exert effective blood glucose control when the onset, peak, and duration of our insulin formulations are so slow. Time and again I am amazed to watch Loop ramp up basal insulin from say 1.0 units/hour to say, 3.0 units/hour, and turn a 30 minutes forecast trending higher BG line back into my target zone.
Automated dynamic basal insulin delivery is an effective tool to control blood sugar.
1 Like