The Brave New World of Home-Brewed Diabetes Technologies
After Dana Lewis was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes at age 14, it took her some time to overcome her initial awkward feelings about having to wear an insulin pump. She eventually succeeded, but another problem remained: The alarm linked to her continuous glucose monitor (CGM) sometimes failed to wake her at night.
Lewis refused to accept this. Her search for a solution led her to find a way to customize the volume on her CGM and, later, to engineer her own artificial pancreas system. She’s far from the only person doing it these days.
The average person with Type 1 diabetes will undergo 65,000 insulin injections and 80,000 blood sugar readings during their lifetime—essential parts of living with an autoimmune disease in which the pancreas ceases to produce enough insulin to regulate blood-sugar levels. People with Type 1 diabetes tend to require continuous supervision of insulin and blood-sugar levels.