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Doctors Applaud DIY Diabetes Treatments That Are Quick And Inexpensive
By Mikelle Leow, 15 Nov 2021
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Photo 73450923 © 7active Studio | Dreamstime.com
To maintain blood sugar levels, diabetes patients would normally have to go through a two-step process of monitoring and insulin jabs. It’s cumbersome and stressful to do this on the regular, so patients have developed treatments that streamline this into one step.
Now, scientists have given these DIY solutions their seal of approval.
Fed up with the lack of progress in innovation for easier diabetes treatments, some patients and advocates took it upon themselves to design their own open-source, intelligent artificial pancreases, which instantly inject insulin into the body when a spike in glucose levels is detected. While there are commercial kits that do the job, they tend to be expensive, Mashable reports.
In 2015, patient inventor Dana Lewis—alongside software engineers Scott Leibrand and Ben West—created the Open Artificial Pancreas System (OpenAPS), a device that automatically injects its user when their blood sugar level is raised. The project was made open-source, with step-by-step instructions, so others could build and personalize their own versions at home.
Throwback to when my pancreas looked like this #OpenAPS #WeAreNotWaiting pic.twitter.com/qlKyDrK8xo
— Cas 🏳️🌈 (@cascer1) June 9, 2021
The first commercial system, the Medtronic MiniMed 670G, arrived two years later.
In line with OpenAPS, patients also launched the ‘#WeAreNotWaiting’ campaign highlighting their restlessness with how long it has taken for healthcare companies to make smart and efficient diabetes treatments.
In a new paper published in the Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology journal on Saturday, more than 40 doctors, healthcare professionals, and legal experts expressed their approval of such DIY systems, having carefully observed that the citizen scientist-designed treatments have made care more accessible and less stressful, as well as improved sleep quality for both patients and caretakers who no longer have to wake up in the middle of the night to administer injections.
This is a huge step forward, given the general skepticism of DIY medical treatments only aggravated by the prevalence of fake COVID-19 vaccines and cures.
The clear benefits of DIY, open-source artificial pancreases, such as a more comfortable experience for patients, have proven that the medical industry can take them seriously, the scientists explained. “Healthcare professionals have an important role in facilitating and supporting people with diabetes to obtain beneficial outcomes from AID [Artificial Insulin Delivery] systems,” they clarified, adding that these projects bring “strong, ethical” repercussions to the community.
To be clear, the team isn’t advising that such methods “be universally recommended over commercial options.” By acknowledging these home treatments, it is hoped that doctors and lawmakers would create guidelines to administer safe use.
“The medical and legal position of do-it-yourself and citizen science approaches have been subject to a lot of debate and uncertainty,” described the paper’s co-author Dr Sufyan Hussain. “This paper not only clarifies the position for do-it-yourself artificial pancreas systems in diabetes as a safe and effective treatment but sets a precedent for achieving an international professional consensus for other treatments based on user-driven do-it-yourself technologies and innovations.”
So pleasing to see #PWD and HCP, researchers partners continue to advance in open-source insulin delivery. Also we need to call on policy, legislation update to take into account, otherwise #offlabel use of device, insulin do put HCPs in difficult positions constantly https://t.co/BAPkgads6q
— Dr Kevin Lee (@dr_kevinlee) November 14, 2021
[via Mashable, cover photo 73450923 © 7active Studio | Dreamstime.com]
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