The Control-IQ artificial pancreas system was derived from research at the UVA Center for Diabetes Technology. (Image credit: Tandem Diabetes Care)
Automated insulin delivery (AID), also known as the artificial pancreas, has revolutionized the management of type 1 diabetes in the past 4 years, driven in large by technologies developed at the University of Virginia. Systems such as the Tandem t:slim with Control-IQ, can adjust insulin doses every 5 minutes to patients’ needs, but still heavily rely on patients entering the timing and sizes of their meals or exercise sessions.
Building on the success of the artificial pancreas, the UVA Center for Diabetes Technology has continued to develop experimental systems to enable the next generation of AID devices, focused on further freeing people with type 1 diabetes from the day-to-day management of their disease, while ensuring optimal clinical outcomes.
The latest development is an AI-driven artificial pancreas that controls directly all insulin injections, not only modulating doses based on immediate needs, but freeing people with type 1 diabetes from even announcing meals to the system. Based on the artificial neural networks technology, this unique system was deployed in 6 study participants in December with great success, achieving clinical outcomes similar to first generation system but without requiring input from the patients.
An additional 30 people are expected to use the system across the U.S. over the next few months, building necessary performance and safety data to enable a larger and longer study aimed at demonstrating the clinical relevance of this new approach by the end of the year.