Project summary
As some people living with type 1 diabetes benefit from hybrid closed loop, they still need to count carbs and adjust insulin doses at meals. Professor Roman Hovorka’s team is developing a fully automated system that hopes to reduce these demands and act more like a true ‘artificial pancreas’. They’re investigating why their current fully closed loop system works for some people with type 1 but not for others. They hope to optimise their technology so that more people could benefit from and access it in the future.
Background to research
A hybrid closed loop system is made up of an insulin pump and a continuous glucose monitor that ‘talk to each other’. This tech is transforming the management of type 1 diabetes. But it still requires users to count carbs and manage insulin at meals.
Professor Roman Hovorka and his team are developing a more advanced closed loop system that can fully automate insulin delivery at mealtimes. The team discovered that this technology works differently for different people with type 1 diabetes. Now, they want to look for factors that help explain why the system helps some people meet target blood sugar levels, while other people aren’t able to.
Research aims
Professor Hovorka and his PhD student will analyse data from over 10,000 people who are using hybrid closed loop systems in the real-world, and data from two research studies where volunteers have been testing a fully closed loop system. They’ll look for factors that can help explain the time-in-range differences amongst these users.
They’ll use these findings to optimise their fully closed loop system. And finally, test its performance at keeping blood sugars in target range using a computer simulator of a virtual population of people with type 1.
Potential benefit to people with diabetes
By fine-tuning the technology, this project aims to advance a fully closed loop system toward clinical trials, bringing it closer to widespread use for people with type 1 diabetes. This would help more people have stabler blood sugar levels, lowering the risk of long-term complications, reducing health disparities and transforming day-to-day life for people living with type 1.
