(Things I didn’t realize were involved in open-sourcing a DIY artificial pancreas: writing “yes you can” style self-help blog posts to encourage people to take the first step to TRY and use the open source code and instructions that are freely available….for those who are willing to try.)
—
You are the only thing holding yourself back from trying. Maybe it’s trying to DIY closed loop at all. Maybe it’s trying to make a change to your existing rig that was set up a long time ago. Maybe it’s doing something your spouse/partner/parent has previously done for you. Maybe it’s trying to think about changing the way you deal with diabetes at all.
Trying is hard. Learning is hard. But even harder (I think) is listening to the negative self-talk that says “I can’t do this” and perhaps going without something that could make a big difference in your daily life.
99% of the time, you CAN do the thing. But it primarily starts with being willing to try, and being ok with not being perfect right out of the gate.
—
I blogged last year (wow, almost two years ago actually) about making and doing and how I’ve learned to do so many new things as part of my OpenAPS journey that I never thought possible. I am not a traditional programmer, developer, engineer, or anything like that. Yes, I can code (some)…because I taught myself as I went and continue to teach myself as I go. It’s because I keep trying, and failing, then trying, and succeeding, and trying some more and asking lots of questions along the way.
Here’s what I’ve learned in 3+ years of doing DIY, technical diabetes things that I never thought I’d be able to accomplish:
You don’t need to know everything.
You really don’t particularly need to have any technical “ability” or experience.
You DO need to know that you don’t know it all, even if you already know a thing or two about computers.
(People who come into this process thinking they know everything tend to struggle even more than people who come in humble and ready to learn.)
You only need to be willing to TRY, try, and try again.
It might not always work on the first try of a particular thing…
The learning is a big piece of this, because we’re completely changing the way we treat our diabetes when we go from manual interventions to a hybrid closed loop (and we learned some things to help do it safely).
You can do this – as long as you think you can.
If you think you can’t, you’re right – but it’s not that you can’t, it’s that you’re not willing to even try.
This list of things gets proved out to me on a weekly basis.
I see many people look at the #OpenAPS docs and think “I can’t do that” (and tell me this) and not even attempt to try.
What’s been interesting, though, is how many non-technical people jumped in and gave autotune a try. Even with the same level of no technical ability, several people jumped in, followed the instructions, asked questions, and were able to spin up a Linux virtual machine and run beta-level (brand new, not by any means perfect) code and get output and results. It was amazing, and really proved all those points above. People were deeply interested in getting the computer to help them, and it did. It sometimes took some work, but they were able to accomplish it.
OpenAPS, or anything else involving computers, is the same way. (And OpenAPS is even easier than most anything else that requires coding, in my opinion.) Someone recently estimated that setting up OpenAPS takes only 20 mouse clicks; 29 copy and paste lines of code; 10 entries of passwords or logins; and probably about 15-20 random small entries at prompts (like your NS site address or your email address or wifi addresses). There’s a reference guide, documentation that walks you through exactly what to do, and a supportive community.
You can do it. You can do this. You just have to be willing to try.
What if, instead of guessing needed changes (the current most used method) basal rates, ISF, and carb ratios…we could use data to empirically determine how these ratios should be adjusted?
Meet autotune.
Historically, most people have guessed basal rates, ISF, and carb ratios. Their doctors may use things like the “rule of 1500” or “1800” or body weight. But, that’s all a general starting place. Over time, people have to manually tweak these underlying basals and ratios in order to best live life with type 1 diabetes. It’s hard to do this manually, and know if you’re overcompensating with meal boluses (aka an incorrect carb ratio) for basal, or over-basaling to compensate for meal times or an incorrect ISF.
And why do these values matter?
It’s not just about manually dosing with this information. But importantly, for most DIY closed loops (like #OpenAPS), dose adjustments are made based on the underlying basals, ISF, and carb ratio. For someone with reasonably tuned basals and ratios, that’s works great. But for someone with values that are way off, it means the system can’t help them adjust as much as someone with well-tuned values. It’ll still help, but it’ll be a fraction as powerful as it could be for that person.
There wasn’t much we could do about that…at first. We designed OpenAPS to fall back to whatever values people had in their pumps, because that’s what the person/their doctor had decided was best. However, we know some people’s aren’t that great, for a variety of reasons. (Growth, activity changes, hormonal cycles, diet and lifestyle changes – to name a few. Aka, life.)
With autosensitivity, we were able to start to assess when actual BG deltas were off compared to what the system predicted should be happening. And with that assessment, it would dynamically adjust ISF, basals, and targets to adjust. However, a common reaction was people seeing the autosens result (based on 24 hours data) and assume that mean that their underlying ISF/basal should be changed. But that’s not the case for two reasons. First, a 24 hour period shouldn’t be what determines those changes. Second, with autosens we cannot tell apart the effects of basals vs. the effect of ISF.
Autotune, by contrast, is designed to iteratively adjust basals, ISF, and carb ratio over the course of weeks – based on a longer stretch of data. Because it makes changes more slowly than autosens, autotune ends up drawing on a larger pool of data, and is therefore able to differentiate whether and how basals and/or ISF need to be adjusted, and also whether carb ratio needs to be changed. Whereas we don’t recommend changing basals or ISF based on the output of autosens (because it’s only looking at 24h of data, and can’t tell apart the effects of basals vs. the effect of ISF), autotune is intended to be used to help guide basal, ISF, and carb ratio changes because it’s tracking trends over a large period of time.
Ideally, for those of us using DIY closed loops like OpenAPS, you can run autotune iteratively inside the closed loop, and let it tune basals, ISF, and carb ratio nightly and use those updated settings automatically. Like autosens, and everything else in OpenAPS, there are safety caps. Therefore, none of these parameters can be tuned beyond 20-30% from the underlying pump values. If someone’s autotune keeps recommending the maximum (20% more resistant, or 30% more sensitive) change over time, then it’s worth a conversation with their doctor about whether your underlying values need changing on the pump – and the person can take this report in to start the discussion.
Not everyone will want to let it run iteratively, though – not to mention, we want it to be useful to anyone, regardless of which DIY closed loop they choose to use – or not! Ideally, this can be run one-off by anyone with Nightscout data of BG and insulin treatments. (Note – I wrote this blog post on a Friday night saying “There’s still some more work that needs to be done to make it easier to run as a one-off (and test it with people who aren’t looping but have the right data)…but this is the goal of autotune!” And as by Saturday morning, we had volunteers who sat down with us and within 1-2 hours had it figured out and documented! True #WeAreNotWaiting. :))
And from what we know, this may be the first tool to help actually make data-driven recommendations on how to change basal rates, ISF, and carb ratios.
How autotune works:
Step 1: Autotune-prep
Autotune-prep takes three things initially: glucose data; treatments data; and starting profile (originally from pump; afterwards autotune will set a profile)
It calculates BGI and deviation for each glucose value based on treatments
Then, it categorizes each glucose value as attributable to either carb sensitivity factor (CSF), ISF, or basals
To determine if a “datum” is attributable to CSF, carbs on board (COB) are calculated and decayed over time based on observed BGI deviations, using the same algorithm used by Advanced Meal Asssit. Glucose values after carb entry are attributed to CSF until COB = 0 and BGI deviation <= 0. Subsequent data is attributed as ISF or basals.
If BGI is positive (meaning insulin activity is negative), BGI is smaller than 1/4 of basal BGI, or average delta is positive, that data is attributed to basals.
Otherwise, the data is attributed to ISF.
All this data is output to a single file with 3 sections: ISF, CSF, and basals.
Step 2: Autotune-core
Autotune-core reads the prepped glucose file with 3 sections. It calculates what adjustments should be made to ISF, CSF, and basals accordingly.
For basals, it divides the day into hour long increments. It calculates the total deviations for that hour increment and calculates what change in basal would be required to adjust those deviations to 0. It then applies 20% of that change needed to the three hours prior (because of insulin impact time). If increasing basal, it increases each of the 3 hour increments by the same amount. If decreasing basal, it does so proportionally, so the biggest basal is reduced the most.
For ISF, it calculates the 50th percentile deviation for the entire day and determines how much ISF would need to change to get that deviation to 0. It applies 10% of that as an adjustment to ISF.
For CSF, it calculates the total deviations over all of the day’s mealtimes and compares to the deviations that are expected based on existing CSF and the known amount of carbs entered, and applies 10% of that adjustment to CSF.
Autotune applies a 20% limit on how much a given basal, or ISF or CSF, can vary from what is in the existing pump profile, so that if it’s running as part of your loop, autotune can’t get too far off without a chance for a human to review the changes.
Autotune is one of the things Scott and I spent time on over the holidays (and hinted about at the end of my development review of 2016 for OpenAPS). As always with #OpenAPS, it’s awesome to take an idea, get it coded up, get it tested with some early adopters/other developers within days, and continue to improve it!
A big thank you to those who’ve been testing and helping iterate on autotune (and of course, all other things OpenAPS). It’s currently in the dev branch of oref0 for anyone who wants to try it out, either one-off or for part of their dev loop. Documentation is currently here, and this is the issue in Github for logging feedback/input, along with sharing and asking questions as always in Gitter!
tl;dr – automate a trigger to your #OpenAPS rig to start “wake up” mode (or “eating soon”, assuming you eat breakfast) without you having to remember to do it.
—
Yesterday morning, I woke up and headed to my desk to start working. Because I’m getting some amazing flat line overnights now, thanks to my DIY closed loop (#OpenAPS), I’m more attuned to the fact that after I wake up and start moving around, my hormones kick in to help wake me up (I guess), and I have a small BG rise that’s not otherwise explained by anything else. (It’s not a baseline basal problem, because it happens after I wake up regardless of it being 6am or 8am or even 10:30am if I sleep in on a weekend. It’s also more pronounced when I feel sleep deprived, like my body is working even harder to wake me up.)
Later in the morning, I took a break to jot down my thoughts in response to a question about normal meal rises on #OpenAPS and strategies to optimize mealtimes. It occurred to me later, after being hyper attuned to my lunch results, that my morning wake-up rise up from 1oo perfectly flat to ~140 was higher than the 131 peak I hit after my lunchtime bowl of potato soup.
Hmm, I thought. I wish there was something I could do to help with those morning rises. I often do a temporary target down to 80 mg/dL (a la “eating soon” mode) once I spot the rise, but that’s after it’s already started and very dependent on me paying attention/noticing the rise.
I also have a widely varied schedule (and travel a lot), so I don’t like the idea of scheduling the temp target, or having recurring calendar events that is yet another thing to babysit and change constantly.
What I want is something that is automatically triggered when I wake up, so whether I pop out of the bed or read for 15 minutes first, it kicks in automatically and I (the non-morning person) don’t have to remember to do one more thing. And the best trigger that I could think of is when I end Sleep Cycle, the sleep tracking app I use.
I started looking online to see if there was an easy IFTTT integration with Sleep Cycle. (There’s not. Boo.) So I started looking to see if I could stick my Sleep Cycle data elsewhere that could be used with IFTTT. I stumbled across this blog post describing Sleep Cycle -> iOS Apple HealthKit -> UP -> Google Spreadsheet -> Zapier -> Add to Google Calendar. And then I thought I would add another IFTTT trigger for when the calendar entry was added, to then send “waking up” mode to #OpenAPS. But I don’t need all of the calendar steps. The ideal recipe for me then might be Sleep Cycle -> iOS Health Kit -> UP -> IFTTT sends “waking up mode” -> Nightscout -> my rig. However, I then learned that UP doesn’t necessarily automatically sync the data from HealthKit, unless the app is open. Hmm. More rabbit holing. Thanks to the tweet-a-friend option, I talked to Ernesto Ramirez (long time QS guru and now at Fitabase), who found the same blog post I did (above) and when I described the constraints, then pointed me to Hipbone to grab Healthkit sleep data and stuff it into Dropbox.
(Why Sleep Cycle? It is my main sleep tracker, but there’s IFTTT integration with Fitbit, Jawbone Up, and a bunch of other stuff, so if you’re interested in this, figure out how to plug your data into IFTTT, otherwise follow the OpenAPS docs for using IFTTT to get data into Nightscout for OpenAPS, and you’ll be all set. I’m trying to avoid having to go back to my Fitbit as the sleep tracker, since I’m wearing my Pebble and I was tired of wearing 2 things. And for some reason my Pebble is inconsistent and slow about showing the sleep data in the morning, so that’s not reliable for this purpose. )
Here’s how I have enabled this “wake up” mode trigger for now:
If you’re using Sleep Cycle, enable it to write sleep analysis data to Apple HealthKit.
Download the Hipbone app for iPhone, connect it with your Dropbox, and allow Hipbone to read sleep data from HealthKit.
Log in or create an account in IFTTT.com and create a recipe using Dropbox as the trigger, and Maker as the action to send a web request to Nightscout. (Again, see the OpenAPS docs for using IFTTT triggers to post to Nightscout, there’s all kinds of great things you can do with your Pebble, Alexa, etc. thanks to IFTTT.) To start, I made “waking up” soon a temporary target to 80 for 30 minutes.
Guess what? This morning, I woke up, ended sleep cycle, and ~10-11 minutes later got notifications that I had new data in Dropbox and checked and found “waking up” mode showing in Nightscout! Woohoo. And it worked well for not having a hormone-driven BG rise after I started moving around.
Ideally, this would run immediately, and not take 10-11 minutes, but it went automatically without me having to open Hipbone (or any other app), so this is a great interim solution for me until we find an app that will run more quickly to get the sleep data from HealthKit.
We keep finding great ways to use IFTTT triggers, so if you have any other cool ones you’ve added to your DIY closed loop ecosystem, please let me know!
But, unexpectedly, it was only terrible on the norovirus symptoms front. My BGs were astoundingly perfect. So much so that I didn’t think about diabetes for 3 days.
Showing the net basal adjustments made on day 2 of my norovirus – the dotted line is what my basals usually are, so anything higher than that dotted line is a “high” temp and anything lower is a “low” temp of various sorts.
When I first started throwing up over the first 8 hours, as is pretty normal for norovirus, I first worried about going low, because obviously my stomach was empty.
Nope. I never went lower than about 85 mg/dl. Even when I didn’t eat at all for > 24 hours and very little over the course of 5 days.
After that, I worried about going high as my body was fighting off the virus.
Nope. I never went much higher than a few minutes in the 160s. Even when I sipped Gatorade or gasp, ate two full crackers at the end of day two and didn’t bolus for the carbs.
The closed loop (as designed – read the OpenAPS reference design for more details) observed the rising or dropping BGs and adjusted insulin delivery (using temporary basal rates) up or down as needed. I sometimes would slowly rise to 150s and then slowly head back down to the 100s. I only once started dropping slowly toward the 80s, but leveled off and then slowly rose back up to the 110s.
None of this (\/\/\/\/\) crazy spiking and dropping fast that causes me to overreact.
No fear for having to force myself to drink sugar while in the midst of the worst of the norovirus.
No worries, diabetes-wise, at all. In fact, it didn’t even OCCUR to me to test or think about ketones (I’m actually super sensitive and can usually feel them well before they’ll register otherwise on a blood test) until someone asked on Twitter.
Why this matters
I was talking with my father-in-law (an ER doc) and listening to him explain how anti-nausea medications (like Zofran) has reduced ER visits. And I think closed loop technology will similarly dramatically reduce ER visits for people with diabetes when sick with things like norovirus and flu and that sort of thing. Because instead of the first instance of vomiting causing a serious spiral and roller coaster of BGs, the closed loop can respond to the BG fluctuations in a safe way and prevent human overreaction in either direction.
This isn’t what you hear about when you look at various reports and articles (like hey, OpenAPS mentioned in The Lancet this week!) about this type of technology – it’s either general outcome reports or traditional clinical trial results. But we need to show the full power of these systems, which is what I experienced over the past week.
I’m reassured now for the future that norovirus, flu, or anything else I may get will likely be not as hard to deal with as it was for the first 12 years of living with diabetes when getting sick. That’s more peace of mind (in addition to what I get just being able to safely sleep every night) that I never expected to have, and I’m incredibly thankful for it.
(I’m also thankful for the numerous wonderful people who share their stories about how this technology impacts their lives – check out this wonderful video featuring the Mazaheri family to see what a difference this is making in other people’s lives. I’m so happy that the benefits I see from using DIY technology are available to so many other people, too. At latest count, there are (n=1)*174 other people worldwide using DIY closed loop technology, and we collectively have over half a million real-world hours using closed loop technology.)
As mentioned in the previous post, we had the privilege of coming to New Orleans this past weekend for two events – #DData16 and the American Diabetes Association Scientific Sessions (#2016ADA). A few things stuck out, which I wanted to highlight here.
At #DData16:
The focus was on artificial pancreas, and there was a great panel moderated by Howard Look with several of the AP makers. I was struck by how many of them referenced or made mention of #OpenAPS or the DIY/#WeAreNotWaiting movement, and the need for industry to collaborate with the DIY community (yes).
I was also floored when someone from Dexcom referenced having read one of my older blog posts that mentioned a question of why ??? was displayed to me instead of the information about what was actually going on with my sensor. It was a great reminder to me of how important it is for us to speak up and keep sharing our experiences and help device manufacturers know what we need for current and future products, the ones we use every day to help keep us alive.
Howard DM’ed me in the middle of the day to ask if I minded going up as part of the patient panel of people with AP experiences. I wasn’t sure what the topic was, but the questions allowed us to talk about our experiences with AP (and in my case, I’ve been using a hybrid closed loop for something like 557 or so days at this point). I made several points about the need for a “plug n play” system, with modularity so I can choose the best pump, sensor, and algorithm for me – which may or may not be made all by the same company. (This is also FDA’s vision for the future, and Dr. Courtney Lias both gave a good presentation on this topic and was engaged in the event’s conversation all day!).
At #2016ADA:
There needs to be a patient research access program developed (not just by the American Diabetes Association for their future Scientific Sessions meetings, but at all scientific and academic conferences). Technology has enabled patients to make significant contributions to the medical and scientific fields, and cost and access are huge barriers to preventing this knowledge from scaling. At #2016ADA, “patient” is not even an option on the back of the registration form. Scott and I are privileged that we could potentially pay for this, but we don’t think we should have to pay ($410 for a day pass or $900 for a weekend pass) so much when we are not backed by industry or an academic organization of any sort. (As a side note, a big thank you to the many people who have a) engaged in discussion around this topic b) helped reach out to contacts at ADA to discuss this topic and c) asked about ways to contribute to the cost of us presenting this research this weekend.)
First, everything about #OpenAPS is open source. The content of our poster or any presentation is similarly open source.
Not everyone had time to come by the poster.
Not everyone has the privilege or funds to attend #2016ADA, and there’s no reason not to share this content online, especially when we will likely get more knowledge sharing as a result of doing so.
Speaking of photos, I was surprised that around half a dozen clinicians (HCPs) stopped by and made mention of having used the picture of the #OpenAPS rig and the story of #OpenAPS in one of their presentations! I am thrilled this story is spreading, and being spread even by people we haven’t had direct contact with previously! (Feel free to use this photo in presentations, too, although I’d love to hear about your presentation and see a copy of it!)
We had many amazing conversations during the poster session on Sunday. It was scheduled for two hours (12-2pm), but we ended up being there around four hours and had hundreds of fantastic dialogues. Here were some of the most common themes of conversation:
Why are patients doing this?
Here’s my why: I originally needed louder alarms, built a smart alarm system that had predictive alerts and turned into an open loop system, and ultimately realized I could close the loop.
What can we learn from the people who are DIY-ing?
How can we further study the DIY closed loop community?
This is my second favorite topic, which touches on a few things – 1) the plan to do a follow up study of the larger cohort (since we now have (n=1)*84 loopers) with a full retrospective analysis of the data rather than just self-reported outcomes, as this study used; 2) ideas around doing a comparison study between one or more of the #OpenAPS algorithms and some of the commercial or academic algorithms; 3) ideas to use some of the #OpenAPS-developed tools (like a basal tuning tool that we are planning to build) in a clinical trial to help HCPs help patients adjust more quickly and easily to pump therapy.
What other pumps will work with this? How can there be more access to this type of DIY technology?
We utilize older pumps that allow us to send temp basal commands; we would love to use a more modern pump that’s able to be purchased on the market today, and had several conversations with device manufacturers about how that might be possible; we’ll continue to have these conversations until it becomes a reality.
Scott and I walked away from this weekend with energy for new collaborations (and new contacts for clinical trial and retrospective analysis partnerships) and several ideas for the next phase of studies that we want to plan in partnership with the #OpenAPS community. (We were blown away to discover that OpenAPS advanced meal assist algorithm is considered by some experts to be one of the most advanced and aggressive algorithms in existence for managing post-meal BG, and may be more advanced than anything that has yet been tested in clinical trials.) Stay tuned for more!
It’s been a busy couple (ok, more than couple) of months since we last blogged here related to developments from #DIYPS and #OpenAPS. (For context, #DIYPS is Dana’s personal system that started as a louder alarms system and evolved into an open loop and then closed loop (background here). #OpenAPS is the open source reference design that enables anyone to build their own DIY closed loop artificial pancreas. See www.OpenAPS.org for more about that specifically.)
We’ve instead spent time spreading the word about OpenAPS in other channels (in the Wall Street Journal; on WNYC’s Only Human podcast; in a keynote at OSCON, and many other places like at the White House), further developing OpenAPS algorithms (incorporating “eating soon mode” and temporary targets in addition to building in auto-sensitivity and meal assist features), working our day jobs, traveling, and more of all of the above.
Some of the biggest improvements we’ve made to OpenAPS recently have been usability improvements. In February, someone kindly did the soldering of an Edison/Rileylink “rig” for me. This was just after I did a livestream Q&A with the TuDiabetes community, saying that I didn’t mind the size of my Raspberry Pi rig. I don’t. It works, it’s an artificial pancreas, the size doesn’t matter.
That being said… Wow! Having a small rig that clips to my pocket does wonders for being able to just run out the door and go to dinner, run an errand, go on an actual run, and more. I could do all those things before, but downsizing the rig makes it even easier, and it’s a fantastic addition to the already awesome experience of having a closed loop for the past 18 months (and >11,000 hours of looping). I’m so thankful for all of the people (Pete on Rileylink, Oscar on mmeowlink, Toby for soldering my first Edison rig for me, and many many others) who have been hard at work enabling more hardware options for OpenAPS, in addition to everyone who’s been contributing to algorithm improvements, assisting with improving the documentation, helping other people navigate the setup process, and more!
That leads me to today. I just finished participating in a month-long usability study focused on OpenAPS users. (One of the cool parts was that several OpenAPS users contributed heavily to the design of the study, too!) We tracked every day (for up to 30 days) any time we interacted with the loop/system, and it was fascinating.
At one point, for a stretch of 3 days, we counted how many times we looked at our BGs. Between my watch, 3 phone apps/ways to view my data, the CGM receivers, Scott’s watch, the iPad by the bed, etc: dozens and dozens of glances. I wasn’t too surprised at how many times I glance/notice my BGs or what the loop is doing, but I bet other people are. Even with a closed loop, I still have diabetes and it still requires me to pay attention to it. I don’t *have* to pay attention as often as I would without a closed loop, and the outcomes are significantly better, but it’s still important to note that the human is still ultimately in control and responsible for keeping an eye on their system.
That’s one of the things I’ve been thinking about lately: the need to set expectations when a loop comes out on the commercial market and is more widely available. A closed loop is a tool, but it’s not a cure. Managing type 1 diabetes will still require a lot of work, even with a polished commercial APS: you’ll still need to deal with BG checks, CGM calibrations, site changes, dealing with sites and sensors that fall out or get ripped out… And of course there will still be days where you’re sensitive or resistant and BGs are not perfect for whatever reason. In addition, it will take time to transition from the standard of care as we have it today (pump, CGM, but no algorithms and no connected devices) to open and/or closed loops.
This is one of the things among many that we are hoping to help the diabetes community with as a result of the many (80+ as of June 8, 2016!) users with #OpenAPS. We have learned a lot about trusting a closed loop system, about what it takes to transition, how to deal if the system you trust breaks, and how to use more data than you’re used to getting in order to improve diabetes care.
As a step to helping the healthcare provider community start thinking about some of these things, the #OpenAPS community submitted a poster that was accepted and will be presented this weekend at the 2016 American Diabetes Association Scientific Sessions meeting. This will be the first data published from the community, and it’s significant because it’s a study BY the community itself. We’re also working with other clinical research partners on various studies (in addition to the usability study, other studies to more thoroughly examine data from the community) for the future, but this study was a completely volunteer DIY effort, just like the entire OpenAPS movement has been.
Our hope is that clinicians walk away this weekend with insight into how engaged patients are and can be with their care, and a new way of having conversations with patients about the tools they are choosing to use and/or build. (And hopefully we’ll help many of them develop a deeper understanding of how artificial pancreas technology works: #OpenAPS is a great learning tool not only for patients, but also for all the physicians who have not had any patients on artificial pancreas systems yet.)
Stay tuned: the poster is embargoed until Saturday morning, but we’ll be sharing our results online beginning this weekend once the embargo lifts! (The hashtag for the conference is #2016ADA, and we’ll of course be posting via @OpenAPS and to #OpenAPS with the data and any insights coming out of the conference.)
This post was written months ago for Prescribe Design, and will also be posted/made available there as a collection of their stories by and about patients who design, but I am also posting here for anyone new to #DIYPS and/or wondering about how #OpenAPS came into existence.
—
About the author: Dana Lewis is the creator of #DIYPS, the Do-It-Yourself Pancreas System, and a founder of the #OpenAPS movement. (Learn more about the open source artificial pancreas movement at OpenAPS.org.) Dana can be found online at @DanaMLewis, #DIYPS, and #OpenAPS on Twitter, and also on LinkedIn.
—
Diabetes is an invisible illness that’s not often noticeable, and may be considered to be “easy” compared to other diseases. After all, how hard can it be to track everything you eat, check your blood glucose levels, and give yourself insulin throughout the day?
What most people don’t realize is that managing diabetes is an extremely complex task; numerous variables influence your blood glucose levels throughout the day, from food to activity to sleep to your hormones. Some of these things are easier to measure than others, and some are easier to influence than others, as I’ve learned over the past 13 years of living with type 1 diabetes.
Diabetes technology certainly helps – and those of us with access to insulin pumps and continuous glucose monitors are thankful that we have this technology to better help us manage our disease. But this technology is still not a cure. After I run a marathon, my blood sugar is likely to run low overnight for the next few nights. And the devices I use to help me manage still have major flaws.
For example, my continuous glucose monitor (CGM) gives me a reading of my blood glucose every 5 minutes – but I have to pay attention to it in order to see what is going on (pulling the device from my pocket and pressing a button to see my numbers). And what happens when I go to sleep? I am sleeping, rather than paying attention to my blood sugar.
Sure, you can set alarms, and if your blood glucose (BG) goes above or below your personal threshold, an alarm will sound. That’s great, unless you’re a sound sleeper like me who doesn’t always hear these sounds in my sleep – and unfortunately there’s no way on the device to make the alarms louder.
For years, I worried every night when I went to sleep that I would have a low blood sugar, not hear the alarm, and not wake up in the morning. And since I moved across the country for work, and lived by myself, it could potentially be hours before someone realized I didn’t show up for work, and days before someone decided to check on me inside my apartment.
I was worried about “going low” overnight, and I kept asking the device manufacturers for louder alarms. The manufacturers usually responded, “the alarms are loud enough, most people wake up to them!” This was frustrating, because clearly I’m not one of those people.
I realized that if only I could get my CGM data off my device in real-time, I could make a louder alarm by using my phone or my laptop instead of having to rely on the existing medical device volume settings. It would be as easy as using a basic service like IFTTT or an app like “Pushover” that allows you to customize alerts on an iPhone.
However, for the longest time, I couldn’t get my data off of my device. (In fact, for years I had NO access to my own medical device data, because the FDA-approved software only ran on Windows computers, and I had a Mac.) But in November 2013, I by chance found someone who tweeted about how had managed to get his son’s data off the CGM in real-time, and he was willing to share his code with me. And this changed everything.
(At the time, my continuous glucose monitor only had FDA-approved software that could be used on a Windows computer. Since I had a Mac, when my endocrinologist asked for diabetes data, I took a picture with my iPhone and pasted the images into Excel, and printed it out for him. Data access is an ongoing struggle.)
My design “ah-ha” became a series of “wow, what if” statements. At every stage, it was very easy to see what I wanted to do next and how to iterate, despite the fact that I am not a designer and I am not a traditional engineer. I had no idea that within a year I would progress from making those louder alarms to building a full hybrid closed loop artificial pancreas (one that would auto-adjust the levels on my insulin pump overnight).
Once I had my CGM data, I originally wanted to be able to send my data to Scott (my then-boyfriend and now husband, who lived 20 miles away at the time) to see, but I didn’t want him to get alarms any time I was merely one point above or below my target threshold. What was important for him to know was if I wasn’t responding to alarms. We set up the system so that Scott could see whether or not I was taking action on a low reading, which I signaled by pressing a button. If the system alerted to Scott that I was not responding to a low reading, he could call and check on me, drive 20 miles to see me, or call 911 if necessary. (Luckily, he never needed to call 911 or come over, but within a week of building the first version of the system, he called me when my blood sugar was below 60 and I hadn’t woken up yet to the alarms.)
DIYPS prototype with Pebble
I realized next that if I was already pushing a button on the web interface (pictured), I might as well add three buttons and show him what action I was taking (more insulin, less insulin, or eating carbohydrates) in case I accidentally did the wrong thing in my sleep. I also customized the system so that I could log exactly how much insulin I was taking or how much I was eating.
Because I was entering every action I took (insulin given, any food eaten), we realized that this data could fuel real-time predictions and give precise estimates of where my blood sugar would be 30, 60, or 90 minutes in the future. As a result, I could see where my blood glucose level would be if I didn’t take action, and make sure I didn’t overcorrect when I did decide to take action. This was helpful during the day, too. The CGM has alarm thresholds that notify you if you cross the line; but #DIYPS will predict ahead of time that I am likely to go out of range, and will recommend action to help prevent me from crossing the threshold.
The system worked great and generated many alarms that woke me up at night. (Ironically, we generated so many alarms that Scott would periodically change the sound of the alarm without telling me, because my body would get used to ignoring the same sound over time!) The next step was deciding to get a smart watch (in my case, a Pebble) so I could see my data on my watch, and reduce the amount of time I spent pulling my CGM receiver out of my pocket and pressing the button to turn the screen on. With a watch, it was also easier to see real-time push alerts that the system would send me to tell me to take action. As a result, I was able to begin to spend less time throughout the day worrying about my blood sugar, and more time living my life while the system ran in the background, updating every few minutes and alerting me as to when I needed to pay attention when something changed.
We called this system the “Do It Yourself Pancreas System”, or #DIYPS, and we developed it completely in our “free time” on nights and weekends.
People often ask what my health care provider thinks. He didn’t appear very interested in hearing about this system when I first mentioned it, but he was glad to hear I was having positive outcomes with it.
More significantly, I had a lot of other people with diabetes interested in it and wanting to know how they could get it.
As a patient, I can only design tools and technology for myself; but because it would be seen by the FDA as a class III medical device (and making dosing recommendations from a CGM rather than a blood glucose meter, which the CGM is not approved for), I can not distribute it to other people to use as it would have to first be reviewed and regulated by the FDA.
We also kept iterating on #DIYPS and the algorithms I use to predict when my blood sugar is going to end up high or low. By the time we made it to November of 2014, we realized that we had a well-tested system that did an excellent job giving precise recommendations of adjusting insulin levels. If only we had a way to talk to my insulin pump, we theorized that we could turn it into a fully closed loop artificial pancreas – meaning that instead of only allowing my insulin pump to give me a pre-determined amount of insulin throughout the night, a closed loop system would instead take into account my blood sugar and make the automatic needed adjustments to give me more or less insulin as needed to keep me in range.
With the help of Ben West, another developer we met while working on Nightscout, who has spent years working on tools to communicate with diabetes devices, we were able to take a carelink USB stick and use it to communicate with my insulin pump. Plugged into a raspberry pi (a small, pocket sized computer), the carelink USB stick could pull from our algorithms, read from the pump, write commands (in the form of temporary basal rates for 30 minutes), read back the results, update the algorithm and generate new predictions and action items, and then do the same process over and over again.
And so, with the help of various community members, we had closed the loop with our artificial pancreas. And once I had it turned on, testing, and working, it was hard to convince me to take it off. This was December of 2014. More than a year and a half later, I’m still wearing and using it every day and night.
There are definitely challenges to having self-designed a device. There are usability issues, such as the burden of keeping it powered and extra supplies to haul around. But as a patient, and as the designer, I can constantly iterate and make improvements to algorithms or the device setup itself and make it better as I go, all while having the benefit of this lifesaving technology (and more importantly, having the peace of mind to be able to go to sleep safely at night).
And, I have the ability to communicate and spread the word that this type of DIY technology is possible. I frequently talk with others who are interested in building their own artificial pancreas system as part of the OpenAPS movement. Like #DIYPS, I can’t give away an #OpenAPS implementation or build someone else an artificial pancreas. But through #OpenAPS, the community has collectively published a reference design, documentation and code, and established a community to support those who are choosing to do an n=1 implementation, following the reference design we have shared. As of the beginning of May 2016, there have been a total of 56+ people who have decided to close the loop by building individual OpenAPS implementations, with more in progress. (And today, you can see the latest community count of DIY closed loopers here.) You can read more here about the risks and how it is a personal decision to decide to build your own system; each person has to decide if the work to DIY and the risk is worth the potential reward.
For me, this definitely has been and is worth the time and effort. It’s worth noting that I am glad there are traditionally designed devices going into clinical trials and are in the pipeline to be made available to more people. But the timeline for this is years away (2017-2018), so I am also glad that the technology (including social media to enable our community to connect and design new tools together) is where it is today.
You don’t have to be an engineer, or formally trained, to spot a problem with disease management or quality of life and build a solution that works for you. Who knows – the solution that works for you may also work for other people. We can design the very tools we need to make our lives with diabetes, and other diseases, so much better – and we shouldn’t wait to do so.
There were the first few nights of “wow! this works! I wake up at night when I’m high/low”. Then there were the first 100 nights that involved more iteration, testing, and improvements as we built it out more. And then suddenly it had been a year of using #DIYPS, and it was awesome to see how my average BG and a1c were down – and stayed down – while equally as important, my % time in range was up and stayed up. Not to mention, the quality of life improvements of having better nights of sleep were significant.
Year two has been along the same lines – more improvements on A1c/average BGs, time in range, and sleep – but heavily augmented by the fact that I now have a closed loop. If you follow me on Twitter or have checked out the hashtag, you might be tired of seeing me post CGM graphs. At this point, they all look very similar:
(It’s worth noting that I still use #DIYPS, especially during the day to trigger “eating-soon” mode or basically get a snapshot glance at what my BGs are predicted to be, especially if I plan to go out without my loop in tow.)
Thus, #OpenAPS was born in February 2015. Ben West spent a lot of time in 2015 building out the openaps toolkit to enable communication with diabetes devices to make things like closed loops possible. And so the first few months of #OpenAPS seemed slow, while we were busy working on the toolkit and finding ways to take what we learned with the #DIYPS closed loop and model a closed loop that didn’t require knowledge of carbs and could work without internet connectivity (see more about the #OpenAPS reference design here).
In July, we saw a tipping point – multiple other people began to close the loop, despite the fact that we didn’t have very much documented or available to guide them beyond the reference design. (These first couple of folks are incredible! Watch the #OpenAPS hashtag on Twitter to see them share someof theirexperiences.) With their help, the documentation has grown by leaps and bounds, as has the number of people who were subsequently able to close the loop.
As of 12/31/15 as I write this post, there are 22 people who have told me that they have a closed loop running that’s based on the OpenAPS reference design. I make a big deal about marking the date when I make a statement about the number of people running #OpenAPS (i.e. (n=1)*22), because every time I turn around, someone else seems to have done it!
There are dozens of other amazing stories like this in the #WeAreNotWaiting community. As we look to the new year, and I start to wonder about what might be next, I realize the speed of technology and the spirit of ingenuity in this community makes it impossible to predict exactly what we’ll see in 2016.
What I do know is this: we’ll see more people closing the loop, and we’ll see more ways to close the loop, using devices other than the Raspberry Pi, Carelink stick and Medtronic pump. We’ll see more new ways to communicate with old & new diabetes devices and more ways to make the diabetes parts of our lives easier – all because #WeAreNotWaiting.
Sometimes, it’s the little things that make a big difference – even little glimpses of data, or little improvements to ways that you can control the way you access and view your data (and generate alarms).
For example, I recently had a conversation with a few people in the #WeAreNotWaiting community about the different watch faces that exist for displaying CGM data; and about how much I like my #DIYPS watch face. A few reasons why:
It’s a little more discreet than some watch faces showing BG data, so the average person won’t glance at my watch and see a large number.
It pulls from the #DIYPS interface, so I can see what I’m predicted to be, and any current recommendations (such as carbs, temp basal, or bolus needed).
It’s data-heavy, but I like having all this information without having to pull my CGM out and run calculations in my head; or pull out my phone and pull up a web page to #DIYPS; etc.
One of the many cool things about the #WeAreNotWaiting community is how together we have learned and created so many new ways to visualize our data, on various devices (tablets, phones, smart watches) and various size screens. And so when I hear that someone’s not wanting a smart watch, or isn’t using it for diabetes related things, sometimes I think it’s a matter of them finding the right tools to build their own display that works for them. Several times a week I hear about various people working on new, interesting DIY diabetes projects, and it’s awesome that we have tech to improve the tools we have – and excellent social media channels to communicate about these projects.
Related to that, I wanted to share an update – recently Milos, Jason, and others have done some really amazing work to visualize basal rates in Nightscout. (If you use Nightscout, you can get this in the 0.8.2 release – see here for more details.) This means it also can pull in temporary basal rates that are used in #OpenAPS, so you can get a nice visual showing the adjusted basal rate compared to normal scheduled basal rates – and see why it might be needed – on top of display of BG data and everything else that Nightscout offers.
The visualization of temp basals in Nightscout (another example here) is an excellent improvement over how I previously used to check and see what OpenAPS had been doing. I have a watchface (similar to the above #DIYPS one) that shows me what the loop is doing currently, but when I wake up in the morning, I was mostly using a basic screen like the below to see the positive, negative, and net temp basal rates on an hourly basis and comparing that to my CGM graph to get an understanding of what happened.
Visualizing basal rates in Nightscout is a seemingly minor change, but every time we make a change like this that allows me to contextualize all of my data in one place (on a single glanceable watchface; or on the Nightscout screen); it saves a few seconds or minutes that add up to a lot of time saved every day, week, month, and additional year that I’m dealing with diabetes – a big win.
I’ve had the opportunity to meet some fantastic people through our work with #DIYPS and #OpenAPS, one of whom is Eric Von Hippel, an MIT professor and researcher who work on user innovation. He shared a great example of user innovation that I was previously unfamiliar with, but is an awesome parallel for what we in the diabetes community are doing.
History: bike manufacturers used to make bikes for riding on flat surfaces. Some people wanted to ride their bikes down mountains, but existing bikes weren’t too comfortable (they didn’t have spring-based seats – ouch!). So, bikers started customizing and modifying the bikes they had. Eventually, bike manufacturers saw the demand and started building mountain bikes with the same features that the original mountain bikers had used. (And if you don’t like my paraphrased version of this story, Wikipedia is always your friend!)
Are there commercial products coming to market or are in the market that meet some of these needs now? Sure. But remember, I’ve had diabetes since 2002. In 2013, when Scott and I first started working to solve my need for louder alarms, there was NO commercial solution available for either remote data access or alarm customization. Thus the need for #DIYPS, which we built in 2013, and Nightscout, which blossomed in early 2014. And even though tools like Dexcom SHARE and MiniMed Connect have come to market (and in some cases, more quickly with help from the community communicating to the FDA about the critical importance of these tools), they came in 2015, which is a long time to wait for new tools when you’re dealing with diabetes 24/7/365. And when we managed to close the loop, again with help from the amazing #wearenotwaiting community, in December of 2014? Well, it’s now nearing the end of a year (and with amazing continued results from #OpenAPS not just for me, but for 13 additional people and potentially more to come soon), and we are AT LEAST a year and a half, if not more, away from any commercial device to reach the market. Not to mention: I’m not sure that the first generation of closed loops commercially available will be good enough for me.
The commercial entities are getting there. And, I always want to give them credit – I have a closed loop, but I can’t have one without a solidly working insulin pump and an excellent CGM system. They are, for the most part (with the exception of some missing features), making good, solid safe products for me to use.
The manufacturers are also starting to be open to more conversations. Not just “listening”, which they’ve sort-of/maybe done in drips over the past, but actual two-way conversations where we can share the needs that we know of in the community, and discuss what can be incorporated into their commercial product pipeline more quickly. This is progress starting to be made, and I’m excited to see more of it. It seems like there is a refreshed mindset and energy in the industry, as well as an understanding that we all care deeply about safety and that we’re all in this together to make life with diabetes less of a burden – like riding downhill on a mountain bike rather than a road bike.
Recent Comments