New smartphone-based system to treat diabetes
A smartphone, combined with a tiny sensor and wearable insulin pump, can stand in for pancreas, monitoring blood-sugar levels and delivering insulin as needed, researchers said.
The system will enter two final phases of international trials this year.
"We've been working on this specific artificial pancreas as it's called since 2006," said lead researcher Boris Kovatchev, director of the University of Virginia Center for Diabetes Technology.
The system works with a readily available blood-glucose sensor - about the size of a flash drive - that can be worn in a variety of places on the body, such as an arm, leg, or the abdomen, 'Ars Technica' reported.
The app's algorithm analyses the data and wirelessly controls a discreet, wearable insulin pump, which can be hooked to a belt or other piece of clothing. The pump has a very fine needle that delivers insulin into the blood stream.
For traditional management strategies and for Kovatchev's original version of the smartphone app, the goal is to keep blood-glucose levels at a specific target number.
This makes it easy to under- or over-shoot that specific target during manual blood-sugar management, and it means an automatic system has to frequently tweak levels.
These patient-specific short ranges of healthy blood-glucose levels are easier targets that can be stably maintained, avoiding constant adjustments that can lead to swings, Francis Doyle III, dean of Harvard's Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences said.
With 1,286 and 1,015, Mumbai and Delhi NCR hospitals
respectively registered most such cases even as Chennai, Bengaluru, Pune, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Coimbatore, Vadodara and Madurai (in the same) order constituted the top 10 cities and together formed 62 per cent of total diabetes-related health insurance claims, the data said.
Max Bupa Health Insurance said while an average diabetes-related claim handled by it amounted to Rs 53,739 in 2014, last year it reached Rs 60,838. During the last five years, the firm also noted a rise in the claims coming from youth under 25 years of age, which it said spiked by up to 22 per cent.
"Among the various lifestyle disorders, diabetes is one which has become a major concern for people living in both metros, tier-II and III cities. A quick look at statistics and figures indicates that diabetes is assuming endemic proportion in all age and social groups," says Ashish Mehrotra, MD and CEO of Max Bupa.
"We received a competitive number of claims from both men and women. The more serious concern of diabetes is among the below 25 age group, in which we have noticed a 22 per cent increase in claims," he said, adding such figures are indicative of the prevalence of diabetes.
According to a data by Max Bupa, under diabetes-related health claims handled by it the most were made for diseases of the eye and adnexa (adjoining organs) followed by cancer; heart and blood vessels; genitor-urinary (genitals and urinary) system; and infections.
The company also saw five per cent of the overall diabetes related claims coming from the age group of 0-25 years.
There has also been a 25 per cent rise in the number of diabetes related claims from the age group 25-35 years and 12 per cent rise in claims form the age group 35 - 45 years, Bajaj Allianz said.