Aiming to improve the lives of millions of diabetic patients around the world, a major collaborative research project has been granted 7.1 million Euros to develop a unique personalized blood glucose prediction tool. The grant award, made under the Seventh Framework Programme (FP7) of the European Community, will fund a four-year research and development project into the “DIAdvisor portable glucose prediction system, that will utilize Toumaz Technology’s Sensium wireless body monitoring technology. The large-scale project is being coordinated by Novo Nordisk A/S, a world leader in diabetes care, and will be delivered by a consortium of 13 medical, industrial and academic partners, including the European region of the International Diabetes Federation (IDF).

The development of the Personal Glucose Predictive Diabetes Advisor (DIAdvisor) is aimed at providing insulin dependent patients with much greater control in managing their condition. Current diabetes management techniques are restricted to the analysis of blood glucose history, with almost no ability to predict what blood glucose levels might be in several hours’ time. The DIAdvisor system will leverage sophisticated analysis of physiological inputs from non-intrusive body-worn wireless monitors based on the Sensium technology platform. Prediction of blood glucose levels will come from glucose measurements, insulin delivery data and specific patient parameters, to allow patients at any time to actively and accurately predict their short-term blood glucose outlook. This unique tool will enable diabetics to optimize their insulin therapy or take other proactive measures to regulate glucose levels, such as food intake and exercise – thereby significantly reducing the risk, occurrence and potential treatment costs of hypoglycaemic events and the debilitating complications that arise from long term hyperglycaemia. The system will also be capable of wirelessly connecting and providing information and trend data directly to healthcare providers, to enable further therapy improvements and treatment cost reduction.

Toumaz’s role in the project will be to implement the DIAdvisor hardware and software platform, leveraging the Sensium intelligent data acquisition platform and networking infrastructure to enable multiple vital signs measurements from non-intrusive body-worn monitors to be taken and merged with manually entered ‘spot’ measurements (such as food intake), providing the key data for the creation of physiological mathematical modeling, control and prediction algorithms. The resulting analysis and prediction information will then be wirelessly transmitted to a healthcare provider advisory service, with recommended action and treatment advice presented to the patient via a handheld mobile device such as a PDA.

First stage data gathering and clinical trials are planned to start in August, with initial data expected by the end of the year.

www.toumaz.com

RSS    Save to Del.icio.us  Digg This