Electronics and the diabetic

Controlled release of polypeptides and other macromolecules

The use of polymeric matrices for the controlled release of polypeptides and other macromolecular drugs is reviewed. Three principal mechanisms of release include diffusion of the polypeptide through the polymer, erosion of the polymer matrix, and the application of magnetic fields to force more drug out of the matrix. The diffusion controlled systems generally utilize ethylene-vinyl acetate copolymer. The advantage of these systems is facile manipulation of the pore structure to obtain desired release kinetics. Release of many different polypeptides from these systems for periods of months has been demonstrated. Bioerosion provides the advantage that the polymer system does not need to be retrieved. Magnetism provides a mechanism whereby desired increases and decreases in polypeptide release rates can be achieved on demand.

A generic telemedicine infrastructure for monitoring an artificial pancreas trial

Telemedicine systems are seen as a possible solution for the remote monitoring of physiological parameters and can be particularly useful for chronic patients treated at home. Implementing those systems however has always required spending a great effort on the underlying infrastructure instead of focusing on the application cores as perceived by their users. This paper proposes an abstract unifying infrastructure for telemedicine services which is loosely based on the multi-agent paradigm. It provides the capability of transferring to the clinic any remotely acquired information, and possibly sending back updates to the patient. The infrastructure is a layered one, with the bottom layer acting at the data level and implemented in terms of a software library targeting a wide set of hardware devices. On top of this infrastructure several services can be written shaping the functionality of the telemedicine application while at the highest level, adhering to a simple agent model, it is possible to reuse those functional components porting the application to different platforms. The infrastructure has been successfully used for implementing a telemonitoring service for a randomized controlled study aimed at testing the effectiveness of the artificial pancreas as a treatment within the AP@home project funded by the European Union.

A survey of insulin-dependent diabetes-part I: therapies and devices

This paper surveys diabetes therapies from telemedicine viewpoint. In type 1 diabetes therapies, the exogenous insulin replacement is generally considered as a primary treatment. However, the complete replacement of exogenous insulin is still a challenging issue because of its complexity of modeling the dynamics, which is typically modeled nonlinearly. On the other hand, thanks to the progress of medical devices, currently the diabetes therapies are being automated. These medical devices include automated insulin pumps and blood glucose sensors. Insulin pumps are designed to create artificial insulin perfusion while they largely rely on the blood glucose profile measurements and these measurements are achieved by one or more blood glucose sensors. The blood glucose measurements are also important for the insulin-dependent diabetes therapies. An insulin pump along with sensors establishes a good feedback system providing the appropriate amount of the exogenous insulin on demand. Controlling the amount of exogenous insulin to suppress the blood glucose levels requires complicated computations. This paper mostly explains both type 1 and 2 diabetes and their mechanisms accompanied by descriptions of diabetes therapy and medical devices currently utilized in the therapy.