Designing an artificial pancreas architecture: the AP@home experience.

The latest achievements in sensor technologies for blood glucose level monitoring, pump miniaturization for insulin delivery, and the availability of portable computing devices are paving the way toward the artificial pancreas as a treatment for diabetes patients. This device encompasses a controller unit that oversees the administration of insulin micro-boluses and continuously drives the pump based on blood glucose readings acquired in real time. In order to foster the research on the artificial pancreas and prepare for its adoption as a therapy, the European Union in 2010 funded the AP@home project, following a series of efforts already ongoing in the USA. This paper, authored by members of the AP@home consortium, reports on the technical issues concerning the design and implementation of an architecture supporting the exploitation of an artificial pancreas platform. First a PC-based platform was developed by the authors to prove the effectiveness and reliability of the algorithms responsible for insulin administration. A mobile-based one was then adopted to improve the comfort for the patients. Both platforms were tested on real patients, and a description of the goals, the achievements, and the major shortcomings that emerged during those trials is also reported in the paper.