It's a huge problem. On the plus side though: there is an absolute mountain of information about this disease and there is substantial funding poured into getting it further under control. The holy grail (and artificial pancreas like a pace maker) is still a long way off. But substantial improvements have been made in the last decade and a half and I expect that trend to continue for a while.
What I love about this story is that the DIY community managed to break the log-jam of the manufacturers and the regulatory authorities by simply providing them with proof that it can work and can work reliably enough to be allowed on the market. That shortcut probably shaved at least a decade (possibly more) off the progress charts. Manufacturers were (to some degree rightly so) antsy about closed loop systems because it would require them to assume much more liability than they are normally used to, the symptom->diagnosis->action loop that you can engage in by close monitoring and patching together available systems cuts the human out of the loop: the system will function autonomously and a software error or hardware glitch has the potential to kill someone.
So the manufacturers were effectively all waiting on each other to show that this can be done safely and that holding pattern had already lasted for multiple years. In the meantime, the larger manufacturers had some time to gain the upper hand over reliability and teething problems of the newer generation of pumps and those came together just in time with continuous monitoring to enable a big step forward in a very hacked (but fully functional) way. No single manufacturer would have taken that risk at this point in time without that push. But now that it is done they can't be left behind either or they'll lose market share rapidly.
It's a pity that there are not more diseases (at least, not that I'm aware of) that would benefit from this approach, diabetes is unique in that respect.
Best of luck there. By the way: if you want to stay current with the developments in this field the best spot to look for is the announcement of trials, and sometimes the calls for volunteers for such trials.
What I love about this story is that the DIY community managed to break the log-jam of the manufacturers and the regulatory authorities by simply providing them with proof that it can work and can work reliably enough to be allowed on the market. That shortcut probably shaved at least a decade (possibly more) off the progress charts. Manufacturers were (to some degree rightly so) antsy about closed loop systems because it would require them to assume much more liability than they are normally used to, the symptom->diagnosis->action loop that you can engage in by close monitoring and patching together available systems cuts the human out of the loop: the system will function autonomously and a software error or hardware glitch has the potential to kill someone.
So the manufacturers were effectively all waiting on each other to show that this can be done safely and that holding pattern had already lasted for multiple years. In the meantime, the larger manufacturers had some time to gain the upper hand over reliability and teething problems of the newer generation of pumps and those came together just in time with continuous monitoring to enable a big step forward in a very hacked (but fully functional) way. No single manufacturer would have taken that risk at this point in time without that push. But now that it is done they can't be left behind either or they'll lose market share rapidly.
It's a pity that there are not more diseases (at least, not that I'm aware of) that would benefit from this approach, diabetes is unique in that respect.
Best of luck there. By the way: if you want to stay current with the developments in this field the best spot to look for is the announcement of trials, and sometimes the calls for volunteers for such trials.