title: Designing an artificial pancreas architecture: the AP@home experience.
abstract: 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.
authors.affiliation: Department of Electrical, Computer and Biomedical Engineering, University of Pavia, Via Ferrata 1, 27100, Pavia, Italy. giordano.lanzola@unipv.it.
authors.forename: Giordano
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Lanzola
authors.affiliation: Department of Civil Engineering and Architecture, University of Pavia, Pavia, Italy.
authors.forename: Chiara
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Toffanin
authors.affiliation: Department of Civil Engineering and Architecture, University of Pavia, Pavia, Italy.
authors.forename: Federico
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Di Palma
authors.affiliation: Department of Information Engineering, University of Padova, Padova, Italy.
authors.forename: Simone
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Del Favero
authors.affiliation: Department of Civil Engineering and Architecture, University of Pavia, Pavia, Italy.
authors.forename: Lalo
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Magni
authors.affiliation: Department of Electrical, Computer and Biomedical Engineering, University of Pavia, Via Ferrata 1, 27100, Pavia, Italy.
authors.forename: Riccardo
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Bellazzi
mesh_terms: D001698:Biomedical Engineering; D001786:Blood Glucose / Q000032:analysis; D015190:Blood Glucose Self-Monitoring / Q000379:methods*; D003195:Computer Communication Networks; D006801:Humans; D019397:Pancreas, Artificial; D017216:Telemedicine / Q000379:methods*; D014584:User-Computer Interface
chemical_list: D001786:Blood Glucose
keywords: Artificial pancreas; Diabetes mellitus type 1; Glucose control algorithms; Remote monitoring; e-Health and m-health for diabetes management