Automated Insulin Project Awarded to Illinois Tech

A project led by Illinois Tech Professor of Chemical Engineering Ali Cinar that’s aiming to help people with Type 1 diabetes has received $1.2 million from the National Institutes of Health over the next four years to develop a machine learning system that can be integrated into his artificial pancreas system to enhance the accuracy of the artificial pancreas.

The typical person with Type 1 diabetes has to make between 100 and 200 decisions every day just to keep their glucose levels stable, in effect making part of the function of their pancreas turned over to their brain, according to Cinar, who is also the Hyosung S. R. Cho Endowed Chair in Engineering.

Current automated insulin delivery systems on the market require that the user calculate the carbohydrates in their meals and manually report it to the system. They also expect that the user will make manual adjustments when exercising. This takes time and effort, and it leaves this critical medical function open to human error.

If they misjudge or forget to provide the appropriate insulin dose, they may experience weakness, dizziness, fainting, or more serious symptoms when their glucose levels become too low, leaving them exposed to long-term complications based on out-of-target glucose ranges.

This project analyzes a person’s past behavior more extensively by using machine learning and personalizing the device’s decision-making algorithm to improve its ability to determine if someone is or will soon be engaging in behaviors that could impact glucose levels. The predictive ability is important because there is a delay between when insulin is administered and when it begins to act.

The system would assign a probability to the likelihood that the person will be eating lunch soon based on the behavior of the person on the current day and administer an insulin dose accordingly. Then it would continue to monitor the glucose level, and if, as expected, it starts to rise because the person is eating, additional insulin would be administered.

Read more about the artificial pancreas enhancement at Illinois Tech.

Disclaimer: “Research reported in this publication was supported by the National Institutes of Health under Award Number 1R01DK135116-01. This content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.”

Ali Cinar, “Integrating AI and System Engineering for Glucose Regulation in Diabetes,” National Institutes of Health; Award Number 1R01DK135116-01