Creating the Artificial Pancreas: This Wearable Device Senses Blood Glucose and Administers Insulin Accordingly

In some ways, this is a family story. Peter Kovatchev was a naval engineer who raised his son, Boris, as a problem solver, and who built model ships with his granddaughter, Anna. He also suffered from a form of diabetes in which the pancreas cannot make enough insulin. To control the concentration of glucose in his blood, he had to inject insulin several times a day, using a syringe that he kept in a small metal box in our family's refrigerator. But although he tried to administer the right amount of insulin at the right times, his blood-glucose control was quite poor. He passed away from diabetes-related complications in 2002.

Insulin-Action Delay

In the body, insulin is secreted in the pancreas and shunted directly into the bloodstream. But when injected under the skin, even the fastest insulins take from 40 minutes to an hour to reach the peak of their action. So the controller of the artificial pancreas must plan on lowering blood glucose an hour from now—it must predict the future.