National Diabetes Week
10 – 16 June 2012
Over 3.7 million people in the UK are living with diabetes and there are a further 7 million people at risk of developing Type 2 diabetes. According to a recent report in the Lancet, by 2008 over 347 million people were affected worldwide. Diabetes occurs when the level of glucose in the blood becomes higher than normal. There are two main types of diabetes, type 1diabetes and type 2.
Triteq have worked extensively on a highly innovative diabetes project for the last two years in conjunction with seven academic institutions and five commercial partners. The project is AP@home, a European research project funded by the European Commission under the IST framework programme 7 for Information and Communication Technology, ICT.
This week, Triteq Commercial Director Steve Lane is travelling to the University of Virginia to discuss progress on AP@home which is designed to improve the treatment of patients at home with diabetes.
Throughout the world the number of people living with diabetes has risen and although the increase can be attributed to population growth, there is a strong link to an increase in risk factors including obesity. Patients with diabetes have inadequate blood sugar control, which can lead to an array of devastating diseases including heart disease, kidney damage and strokes.
AP@home would allow automated glucose control for people with type 1 insulin treated diabetes. Normally, insulin is given either by manual dose injections (MDI) or via continuous subcutaneous infusion pumps (CSII) based on self-medicated blood glucose (SMBG) readings. However, blood glucose levels can be greatly affected by many factors such as diet, physical activity, illness and stress to name a few, so that it is difficult for patients to manage their insulin needs particularly around meal times and the risk of hypoglycemia overnight, in addition each individual patient has a different tolerance and reaction to varying insulin doses. An advanced AP system that combines a Continuous Glucose Monitor (CGM), an insulin infusion pump (CSII), and an automated closed loop software algorithm that calculates how much insulin to deliver at any time in response to the calculated blood glucose level, could not only improve the quality of life for people with type 1 diabetes, but also reduce the escalating healthcare cost burden.
The cost burden could be addressed by this system as a secondary function/feature is to introduce remote monitoring (for the clinical evaluations), but could be extended to remote treatments i.e. Telemedicine, providing the clinical support infrastructure is in place.
For further information on our work in medical product design and development talk to Triteq today, call Steve Lane on 01488 684554 or email here, or visit our website.
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