On Building My Own Artificial Pancreas
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Re: On Building My Own Artificial Pancreas
#2It's a damn shame that years after this became a thing we are still waiting for a proper commercial product to hit the market at a reasonable price, 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.
$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.
Re: On Building My Own Artificial Pancreas
#3It's a damn shame that years after this became a thing we are still waiting for a proper commercial product to hit the market at a reasonable price , 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 ar…
Making a class 3 medical device (really it's a system of devices, infusion + cgm) that works off the shelf versus something that a hobbiest can throw together are two different games.
Re: On Building My Own Artificial Pancreas
#4It's a damn shame that years after this became a thing we are still waiting for a proper commercial product to hit the market at a reasonable price , 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 ar…
Making a hardware product that is validated in a regulated market is non trivial. At least part of the cost goes to reducing overall risk to a large market, which open source projects aren't really resourced to address.
Re: On Building My Own Artificial Pancreas
#5It's a damn shame that years after this became a thing we are still waiting for a proper commercial product to hit the market at a reasonable price , 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 ar…
Making a hardware product that is validated in a regulated market is non trivial. At least part of the cost goes to reducing overall risk to a large market, which open source projects aren't really resourced to address.
Isn't it possible to design the product such that its risks are greatly reduced? E.g. by limiting the amount of insulin it can deliver in a given timeframe?
Re: On Building My Own Artificial Pancreas
#6Earlier quoted context omitted.
Making a hardware product that is validated in a regulated market is non trivial. At least part of the cost goes to reducing overall risk to a large market, which open source projects aren't really resourced to address.
Isn't it possible to design the product such that its risks are greatly reduced? E.g. by limiting the amount of insulin it can deliver in a given timeframe?
This comment falls under the "why don't you just..." cluster. Even implementing a feature like that (assuming it made sense) carries risk (imagine if your limiter's sensor broke and it failed open).
Designing reliable systems is incredibly hard. It requires a ton of resources (money, lawyers, engineers) And experience and long time frames with relentless effort to document everything so that when somebody does die, you can root cause it and fix the problem without regressions.
I've been continuously impressed with what open source hackers have done with open biology projects, but that doesn't mean any of these products are reasonable replacements for the products that are used by tens to hundreds of millions of people.
Re: On Building My Own Artificial Pancreas
#7Earlier quoted context omitted.
Isn't it possible to design the product such that its risks are greatly reduced? E.g. by limiting the amount of insulin it can deliver in a given timeframe?
This comment falls under the "why don't you just..." cluster. Even implementing a feature like that (assuming it made sense) carries risk (imagine if your limiter's sensor broke and it failed open). Designing reliable systems is incredibly hard. It requires a ton of resources (money, lawyers, engineers) And experience and long time frames with relentless effort to document everything so that when somebody does die, y…
Agreed - open body-hacking projects are amazing feats of community and perseverance, but the systemic cost and access issues that plague high-end medicine will persist until they’re addressed systemically.
Re: On Building My Own Artificial Pancreas
#8So, 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 when produced in quantity. 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.
Re: On Building My Own Artificial Pancreas
#9Earlier quoted context omitted.
Isn't it possible to design the product such that its risks are greatly reduced? E.g. by limiting the amount of insulin it can deliver in a given timeframe?
This comment falls under the "why don't you just..." cluster. Even implementing a feature like that (assuming it made sense) carries risk (imagine if your limiter's sensor broke and it failed open). Designing reliable systems is incredibly hard. It requires a ton of resources (money, lawyers, engineers) And experience and long time frames with relentless effort to document everything so that when somebody does die, y…
> This comment falls under the "why don't you just..." cluster.
It does, but just this once it is spot on, the best pumps on the market do just that.
Re: On Building My Own Artificial Pancreas
#10I'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?
https://www.tidepool.org/blog/tidepool-loop-medtronic-collab...