Computer Assisted Diabetes Care

What is it about?

This article describes the Control Monitor computer system, which was developed in 1986 as a tool to assist with the treatment of type 1 diabetes. Diabetes is a chronic illness, the main feature of which is elevated concentrations of glucose in the blood. The condition is treated by injections of insulin. An important aspect of insulin therapy is to make sure that the dose given is enough to lower the glucose concentration to the normal level, but not too far below that level. Blood glucose concentrations below normal and above normal are both dangerous. An important advance in the care of diabetes was the development of home blood glucose testing machines. These allow a patient to check their blood glucose at any time. These started to become widely used in the mid-1980s. However, there is a limit to the number of tests that can be performed in a day. Control Monitor was developed to make these readings more useful by simulating how blood glucose will vary in the next few hours after a test, and by filling in the gaps between the readings. Control Monitor was one of the first diabetes decision support systems to use a predictive model.

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