An algorithm mimicking pancreas pulsatile behavior improves artificial pancreas performance.

Background: Artificial pancreas design using subcutaneous insulin infusion without pre-meal feed-forward boluses often induces an over-response leading to hypoglycemia due to the increase of blood insulin concentration sustained in time. The objective of this work was to create an algorithm for controlling the function of insulin pumps in closed-loop systems to improve blood glucose management in type 1 diabetic patients by mimicking the pulsatile behaviour of the pancreas.

Methods: A controller tuned in a pulsatile way promotes damped oscillations of blood insulin concentration injected through an insulin pump.