“A paper in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine highlights both the potential benefits of Apple’s newly unveiled HealthKit platform and how far off those benefits might still be,” Philip Elmer-DeWitt reports for Fortune.
“The report describes an experiment in which 20 adults and 32 adolescents with Type 1 diabetes controlled their insulin levels automatically using a miniature blood sugar monitor, a pair of under-the-skin hormone pumps and an iPhone,” P.E.D. reports. “The jerry-rigged device functioned as a bionic pancreas, injecting insulin or glucagon as needed to keep blood sugar levels within a normal range. According to the report, the number of interventions for hypoglycemia among the adolescents was cut in half, from 1.6 per day for a conventional insulin pump to 0.8 a day with the experimental device.”
“The device was developed by Edward R. Damiano, an associate professor of biomechanical engineering at Boston University, whose 15-year-old son has type 1 diabetes,” P.E.D. reports. “His goal is to begin FDA testing in 2015 and win approval before his son starts college in the fall of 2017.”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Arline M.” for the heads up.]