"""
"""
2,000 people around the world have used a home-built pancreas, cobbled together mostly via social media and [...] GitHub. [...] The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is years away from approving a comparably flexible and automated rig for sale. [...] So far the version is way ahead of the market. [...] Medtronic’s latest FDA-approved product can now do most of the things the system can—for $7,000. [...] The DIY pancreas movement would never have happened if not for a Medtronic blunder. In 2011 a pair of security researchers alerted the public that the wireless radio frequency links in some of the company’s best-selling insulin pumps had been left open to hackers. Medtronic closed the loophole after the researchers warned of risks to patients, but it never recalled the devices, leaving thousands in circulation.

By then, Ben West, a programmer and diabetes patient in San Francisco, had decided to hack the pump. [...] He says he’d been careful to use his existing pump as directed but still wound up in the hospital more than once when his blood sugar veered dangerously high or low.
[...]
Working evenings, weekends, and vacations for five years, West reverse-engineered the pump’s communications code, making it possible to send the device instructions. During that time, a group of DIYers calling themselves Nightscout figured out how to relay data from glucose monitors to a smartphone or watch, so parents could monitor kids’ blood sugar levels remotely.
[...]
In June 2014, West met Seattle couple Dana Lewis and Scott Leibrand, who had written an algorithm that could suggest insulin doses. The next step, they decided, was to automate the insulin pump using software.
[...]
At least one big device maker has given up on the artificial pancreas. Johnson & Johnson shut down its project last year, saying it could no longer charge enough for its hardware to make further research and development worth its while. [...] Medtronic is working to better automate the $7,000 version that about 100,000 people are using. [...] Medtronic, which sells about $2 billion worth of diabetes devices a year, is among the companies that have come to regard the DIY community as allies. Company reps meet with DIYers regularly to help them better understand how new technologies such as fast-acting insulin will affect their system, says Ali Dianaty, who handles R&D in Medtronic’s intensive insulin management unit. Marie Schiller, who runs Eli Lilly’s two-year-old artificial pancreas project—and has used the Loop app for her own diabetes treatment—has invited hackers including West, Lewis, and Leibrand to talk to her developers. West has gone on to work for Eli Lilly partner DexCom Inc.
"""
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-08-08/the-250-biohack-that-s-revolutionizing-life-with-diabetes
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-08-08/the-250-biohack-that-s-revolutionizing-life-with-diabetes

Labels: Oleg Zabluda

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