• Posted 08-Jun-2020

PEPPER project: Artificial Intelligence to help improve the lives of people with diabetes

According to the World Health Organisation, over 422 million people have diabetes. Many regulate their condition by administering insulin several times a day, either by injection or insulin pump. An EU-funded project, PEPPER, offers hope to such people. PEPPER’s team of computer scientists, engineers, clinicians and industry leaders is exploring how unobtrusive wearable technology, together with artificial intelligence and mathematical modelling, can offer freedom from daily decision-making.

Currently there is no decision support system for insulin dosing on the market that adapts itself based on real-time blood glucose data and physical activity. The PEPPER team have addressed this by creating a personalised decision support tool that gathers such data on a mobile platform. The system makes predictions based both on the real-time data and manually-entered information, such as carbohydrate consumption and alcohol intake. When users eat a meal, they consult the system to determine how much insulin they need. The artificial intelligence adapts the dose advice according to the previous history of that individual, which is updated dynamically. Users’ safety is guaranteed through two levels of supervision. A first level consisting of a safety system including glucose alerts/alarm and constraints on insulin delivery, and a second layer consisting of a secure cloud-based server allowing remote supervision by clinicians.

The project team has built a strong associated research community, with highlights including prize-winning publications and joint organisation of three workshops on Artificial Intelligence for Diabetes, each co-located with a major conference, and involving editorship of associated journal special issues.

Source: Digital Single Market News (https://bit.ly/2Yck2LR)