Dec 17 2010
Medtronic’s new software for diabetic therapy has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration. The company has been developing sections of the first industrial artificial pancreas, using various in-built systems that will automatically regulate the patient’s insulin depending on the level of blood sugar.
Medtronic has recently released Revel, which is the initial system to incorporate sensing devices with pump, by warning patients when their blood glucose level comes down below the normal. Thus the patient can control the pumps correspondingly. A closed-loop system is also provided to function in a similar manner that a computer instructs an airplane in an autopilot approach.
The company’s CareLink 3.0 software evaluates information from the continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) device, the patient’s insulin pump, and from blood glucose meter and detects the actual periods when the patient shows a reduced (hypoglycemic) or intense (hyperglycemic) glucose level in the blood. The CareLink software then structures the glucose patterns to inform the doctors about the severe conditions of the patients.
Dr. Francine R. Kaufman, chief medical officer at Medtronic’s diabetes unit stated that, the diabetes management is a complicated process and by collecting appropriate data for taking treatment decisions is a tedious task for the doctors and the patients.
Kaufman remarked that the CareLink Pro 3.0 software simplified this difficulty by logging patient data, providing identification models, and by delivering therapy considerations to the doctors. He added that this decision support has helped profoundly in the advancement of artificial pancreas, providing automated decisions to regulate the therapy of the patients.
Source: http://www.medtronic.com