Many patients are frustrated with the quality of medical device technology today, especially those with chronic conditions who rely on them on a daily basis. But not all of them sit quietly with their frustration.
Dana Lewis, a digital health activist who has type 1 diabetes, took matters into her own hands, reports Motherboard¸ hacking into her continuous glucose monitor to make it work more like a properly functioning pancreas would. Normally, the device checks Ms. Lewis' blood every five minutes, and raises an alarm if her blood sugar is too low or too high. However, when Ms. Lewis found herself sleeping through the alarm, she would feel awful the following day.She and her husband decided to go under the hood, reconfiguring the device to better coordinate with her insulin pump, so that rather than sounding an alarm, the monitor tells the pump how much insulin she needs.
Although she is aware this is a risky move, Ms. Lewis told Motherboard that as a diabetic, she is used to having to judge for herself how much insulin she might need, and in this sense the feedback system between the pump and the monitor act as a sort of cruise control.
Ms. Lewis calls the monitor-pump interplay an Artificial Pancreas System, according to Motherboard. While her devices gave her access to data about her condition and her body before, none of it was particularly actionable, and advocates for freeing patient data argue if device companies used open application programming interfaces, patients would have more options to streamline their own care.