Preventing these situations entirely by predicting these events and reducing the administered basal insulin would be ideal, but humans don't exist in a vacuum. I don't think a system autonomously feeding sugar would be the optimal solution however; patients who utilize CGM's today are still instructed to monitor blood glucose through traditional means for calibration and confidence in system accuracy, so I don't think it would be an additional burden for them to continue to carry a source of sugar for emergency hypoglycemic events. I think predicting and preventing lows through lowered basal rates, in combination with on hand sources of glucose for emergency situations, would be best.
Even a reduction in the amount of hypo- (and, hyper-) glycemic events would be a big win for patients and educators. I think the quality of care would vastly increase with such systems in place.
Additionally - the human body has systems in place to bring blood sugars back into a safe range when it feels it is in an emergency situation. I do not claim to be an expert on this matter, but it is my understanding that the liver is able to release glycogen into the system to spike blood glucose levels back up if they have fallen low [1]. This is why some diabetic patients may experience high blood sugars in the mornings if they have experienced a hypoglycemic event overnight and slept through it. I don't believe this would be a good solution to depend on, however.
This article leaves us hanging; the initial motivator for developing the system is to prevent instances of overnight hypoglycemia - but we reach a conclusion talking about how it can autonomously deliver insulin to correct for hyperglycemic events. Were they ever able to make the algorithm robust enough to predict low blood sugars in the future and "shut off" or reduce delivery of basal insulin to mitigate these events?
New pumps by Medtronic are equipped with an auto-off feature that suspends insulin delivery if the user's blood sugar is below a certain threshold [1], however this is a rear-facing indicator and the patient will still experience a hypoglycemic event.
I assume the next logical steps towards making these systems fully autonomous is to remove the idealogical separation of basal and bolus insulin; instead, the system would register increases and decreases of blood sugar and take systematic steps towards bringing them back into a healthy range - much like a healthy pancreas does, either by increasing or decreasing the amount of insulin being delivered at a given time. That way a patient can eat, exercise, and live a "normal" lifestyle while the pump takes care of delivering the correct amount of insulin.
There exist plenty of "Desktop" CNC Routers -- these are generally cheaper but have a smaller workable space than what comes to mind when you think of a classic CNC Router.
Does anyone have any recommendations of books that might pair well with this one in the math/data/statistics space? Thought I might pick up a few books and score some free shipping.