We're thrilled to figure so a lot innovation cropping up in the "real international" of diabetes these years, with many homemade creations moving the needle forward. That's a big part of what DiabetesMine is all or so, and the impetus behind the grassroots #WeAreNotWaiting trend that kicked off in late 2013.

Reasonable recently, we distributed the taradiddle of the Mazlish family in New York house (aka the Bigfoot clan), and how they've been victimization a homemade closed eyelet system for 2+ old age today.

Nowadays, information technology's a privilege to share other story from the opposite death of the country where a soon-to-be man and wife, Danu John L. Lewis and Scott Leibrand, have also "closed the loop" with their own homemade tech known as the Homemade Pancreas System (or DIYPS, for insufficient).

Opening, converge Dana and Scott. Diagnosed with type 1 during her freshman year of high school, Dana's from the greater Seattle, Washington, area and works Eastern Samoa senior manager of extremity content for a not-profit wellness system. Naturally, many in the online advocacy world know her As the founder of the time period #HCSM chaffer years ago, which later elysian the #DSMA chatter on Chirrup each week. The mankin beside her is Scott, a "type awesome" with a computer networking engineering background and career.

They're some busy professionals, functional along this DIYPS project in their spare time, which is impressive! Check out this great Q&A with the couple from Demonstrate 2014 for more point on their story and how their D-tech project came to personify, in November 2013.

In early Feb, they took their effort to the next level by launching the #OpenAPS (Open Artificial Pancreas System) project, aimed at bringing closed-loop system functionality to anyone who wants to cut into into it for themselves. Like so many in this tech-savvy #WeAreNotWaiting assailable-source world, they're sharing bad much everything online for free — allowing independent users, researchers, not-profits and even industry folk to experimentation and hopefully make D-tech better for all of us.

We connected with the partner off away phone recently, and here's what they had to suppose approximately the unused  #OpenAPS endeavor and how the DIYPS system has helped them in their person-to-person lives — especially now, directional into their future wedding in August (!)

DM) OK, what exactly is the Homemade-Pancreas Arrangement?

Dana) If you deal the setup, information technology doesn't look care an AP system. It's very underwhelming to look at, only that's the beauty of it.

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The basic idea of the scheme and physical components are a Bir Pi (charge plate-sized reckoner), a Medtronic Minimed ticker, a Dexcom CGM, and a Nightscout uploader. They are genuinely basic physical components, and it's shelling powered and stays in close proximity to the user. IT uses an algorithm that basically asks, 'Hey, do you pauperism this much insulin as a bolus?' And it converts that to a basal rank. That's the only configuration we had to do.

Scott) The OpenAPS we consume today is based on existing components we had for DIYPS.  We use the Nightscout uploader, it does all the calculations in the cloud, and then the Boo Pi reasonable has to connect to the Net and download that to the pump. It's a very dumb system, actually, merely that's because it's designed to be simple. This is not the same kind of "blackbox algorithm" that most Artificial Pancreas projects expend, and IT's studied to be extremely safe. It just sets a temp basal for 30 minutes at one time, indeed there's minimal risk of administering too much insulin — and flat if it did, information technology can't administer enough to do whatever harm. We have been very evocative during this smooth process of making it an easy-to-understand system and fashioning reliable it's wholly safe and very predictable, using the same bolus and essential paradigm used in pumping.

On that point are things we want to make better, care compacting the uploader so it only takes up half a pocket and is more portable. It is portable with A battery take immediately, but it's just not inferior enough to be practical to carry all o'er the place decently right away.

When we saw you some at the most recent D-Data Exchange event, you hadn't yet drawn the grommet… This all moved quicker than you were expecting, right?

Scott) We've been going non-stop since December, and all night for a year from when we first got data off the CGM, in middle-November '13.

Dana) When we looked at closing the loop, we aforementioned, "Hey, we can do this aside Aug. 1 for the wedding…." we ended up doing that in two weeks and drawn the loop first in December. So, we have more months to bring it perfected and running the best we can. A big question now is, how it will be used at the wedding?

What's the personal experience been like for you using this DIYPS?

Dana) This has changed how I live with diabetes, regardless of all the data. That's non something to overlook all told of this. That approach is revolutionary, and it's something we want to translate and attain getable to past people and clinicians. We think it's a novel way to approach something everyone inevitably in living with diabetes, to piddle these decisions and get to extremely better outcomes.

But what's absorbing to me is that if you took all my technical school away, I'd still constitute so much major settled connected what I've learned from using the scheme.

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OK, information technology sounds pretty awesome. But what about those of us who aren't very tech-compass, and may not comprise able to put this together for ourselves?

Dana) My goal is to aid educate people approximately how I've used this. I don't want to discourage people to suppose you have to constitute an technologist, or have some tech knowledge to get this set up. There are a lot of people involved, and there is so much support — and that's why we have this all beingness shared and discussed openly.

Why open-author and community-supported?

Scott) The reason this worked is because a bunch of people found to each one else. We couldn't have done this without John Costik (a D-Dad who began the Nightscout/CGM in the Mottle movement), and Ben West, who helped with the CareLink package. There are so many single people who are a portion of this. It's a multi-ethnic movement as very much like it is a specialised matter.

How coiffure you think this changes the unfit for industriousness and ordered products?

Scott) Our dream here is to get to a point where the simple APS is considered sporting the measure way of doing things. The diabetes companies can part with innovating along the harder problems. We want to free up their time, and make these things derive together…

Danu) We want them to cause better pumps and sensors, and be able to sharpen on that. We don't want to underplay their role in all of this. We wouldn't be Hera without them. Ideally, you could pick whichever ticker and CGM brand you corresponding, and so use those devices with this algorithm simply by plugging it in and turning it on. That's the dream, to have this stopper-and-play arrangement for stoppered loop. You shouldn't be limited by proprietary products and brands of technology.

And you have talked with the FDA about whol of this?

Dana) Yes. I am perpetually surprised when we compass bent the FDA at how receptive they are when they reply. It's clear that we have equal rights to beginner these regulatory conversations. Last year at this time, we never imagined two individuals could endure talk to the FDA about this setup and get anywhere substantive!

Dred Scott) They'ray hearing. It will be absorbing to see where we go from here, equally we get into more AP systems that are calm down existence developed.

What's the next milestone for your project?

Dana) There is non a specific timeline operating theatre deadline. We are in Phase I, thus to speak — getting other innovators building their own iteration. With this Call to Action that's happening nowadays, we want to percentage the data and physical body upon what we're entirely learning. We are also talk to potential partners and sponsors for clinical trials.

Robert Falcon Scott) The timeline is dependent connected how quickly we get foreordained things through. There are deuce parallel tracks:

  1. The N=1 studies that are outside the regulatory process, just people experimenting on themselves. There is no need for (investigational trial) approval or mass use. That's going on, and it's the #WeAreNotWaiting root of this. The plan is to start assembling private data and putting that unitedly to show it's condom.
  2. Then there's the traditional objective trial vision, to find and start talking to people with get getting FDA approval for those studies.

It seems this is a critical moment when many an of these developments are "coming out of the water closet," so to address…

Dana) That we are being open and transparent, I think, does help companies and others who are in stealth mode. And it gives masses with diabetes to Bob Hope that it's coming.

Scott) Information technology's exciting to see so many another who've been doing this, but seaport't been comfortable sharing until now. That's big. The hie at which Nightscout is running, makes all of this move ahead more cursorily. It's interesting to see those efforts amount out into the vulnerable.

How rear we all supporte?

Dana) The big thing I hear day in and day out is, "I want it!" and so the enquiry of how they can cotton on. Sign up for the OpenAPS mailing list, and you rear end find all kinds of information thither online including some announcements we defecate.

Everyone's a part of this. IT takes all kinds of people with unusual skills and knowledge, and just being compliant to share stories. Recently, someone saw a typo appearing on the Nightscout screen, and helium opened up the tracking document online and put a bug report in to cotton on fixed. That involved Github (development environment), and it was precise straightforward to make the change himself even with a teensy acquisition curve. So just proofreading is important, and just diffusive word and talk about it. There's something everyone can perform.

This is such great news, some on the #OpenAPS front and about that big wedding coming up! We wish big success on some fronts!