The artificial pancreas: making headway

摘要

The concept of 'closing the loop' connecting glucose sensing to insulin delivery is not new. In 1964, Kadish was the first to use continuous real-time glucose monitoring to close the loop with an 'on-off system' using an intravenous (IV) infusion of insulin and glucose. Ten years later, Albisser in Toronto and Pfeiffer in Ulm combined IV continuous glucose monitors with algorithms implemented on a microcomputer to automate IV insulin delivery thus facilitating the development of the Biostator (Miles Laboratory Inc, USA); the first commercial 'artificial pancreas'.