The Smart Insulin Pen by John Walsh
May 14th, 2008 by Kevin
What’s old is new again… at least as far as designs for better tools in the care of diabetes. In response to Amy’s call for new designs over at diabetesmine, I thought John Walsh’s efforts from a few years ago deserve some acknowledgment. For those of you who don’t know who John is or why this design is important, you really have to go beyond the design itself. You have to know that John is the author of Pumping Insulin and responsible for getting the word out to thousands of people about advanced ways of utilizing an insulin pump. He is also a Certified Diabetes Educator and advises many of the diabetes companies. I think he was also frustrated with the whole patent thing and that stirred him to go into great detail on this design and publish it as ‘prior art’ thus making it harder for someone to patent/block this concept from market. Patents are a tricky thing but kudos to John for taking action and making his frustrations known… plus sharing some pretty cool ideas for others to work with assuming they are up to the challenge, have funding and don’t run into other patents in this area.
Without further introductions, read up on the Smart Insulin Pen and make your own enhancements to his original design. That’s what it’s for! If you do take an approach to enhance please make sure you give John credit for his original design and thank him for his hard work.
Last 5 posts by Kevin
- Since When Was Diabetes Politically Correct - August 24th, 2008
- Diabetes HouseCall Profiled In Current Issue of Diabetes Self Management Magazine - August 17th, 2008
- 50 Ways To Leave Your Logbook - August 13th, 2008
- 'twas the night before camp - July 19th, 2008
- Diabetech® Announces Commercial Availability of its Universal Mobile Health Platform (UMHP) - July 16th, 2008
May 14th, 2008 at 8:07 am
I agree; I saw this suggestion a few years ago and lamented that the closest we’ve gotten is Lilly’s Humapen Memoir; and that product is not even threaded enough to dose insulin in 1/2 units! While I do think this design has its merits, some are less practical — Bluetooth, for example, would require a costly subscription service that may be out of reach for many patients — but the basic design concept with a built-in database for foods warrants further exploration.
Let me also add to the idea: lets consider non-proprietary insulin cartridges, which can be filled with ANY brand and/or type of insulin from the less costly vial formats, thus increasing the likelihood of attaining the broadest possible insurance coverage. Also, I would suggest 2 different several colors for rapid and basal insulin to minimize confusion. Is there any way to gather the suggestions to submit a comprehensive design?
May 14th, 2008 at 9:37 am
I like the idea of creating a collective of the enhancements to the Walsh concept. In fact, this could be an ongoing thing which evolves over time with comments back from all those concerned as to their opinions and an ability to ‘vote’ on features/specs. Of course, this same collective will probably have to be the ones to finance the development of such a device as demonstrated by the lack of interest thus far by big companies and the investor community to date.
How about a wiki that allows anyone to share their idea? I just created one specifically for enhancing the Smart Insulin Pen at CGMSCENTRAL.COM, an open community on the web. You can continue to enhance this concept or start your own wiki page for a completely new idea.
I wonder how many people would be willing to put their money where their mind is?
May 14th, 2008 at 1:25 pm
This thread got me to thinking about some of the earliest work we did at Diabetech back in 2002. There were several targeted NIH grant programs then and we submitted a few proposals in collaboration with Texas A&M University’s computer science department with guidance from endocrinologists, diabetes educators and patients only to learn that there are definitely unwritten rules of the game when it comes to winning federal grants (and that goes for private grants as well) not to mention the various strings attached… but that is a different blog entry.
One of those applications was for financial support of a design we call the Remote Control Artificial Pancreas or RCAP for short. This was preceded by a modeling and simulation phase we call p-RCAP with the p standing for precursor.
Essentially, this design integrates a system of body sensors (glucose, blood pressure, heart rate, body temperature, etc…), along with ambient sensors (air temperature, location, etc…) and drug infusion devices plus a handheld device (eg PDA) along with an automated remote wireless transmission capability to a large data center for the serious number crunching and historical analysis of the data. Ulitmately, the software is used to assist the person in taking various actions to increase the time spent in the normal glycemic range; aka an artificial pancreas but with this design being several leaps beyond the focus of JDRF and other similar efforts of its day.
My point being, there is no shortage of great ideas. Not just ours but from thousands of academics, inventors, engineer-diabetics, etc… The only shortage is money to develop new gear that includes the feature set that comes with a guaranteed base of customers.