Yesterday saw a great conference in Swansea for PWDs*, organised by Diabetes UK Cymru lead Dai Williams and his team. It was an honour to be able present alongside many people I consider friends and I just loved everyone’s presentations.
*if you don’t know what PWDs are check out the T1Resources.uk diabetes/tech dictionary.
A UK conference breakthrough?
Closed-Loop Sessions #1 – Dr Hood Thabit
Past, Present and Future
Dr Thabit was part of the Cambridge closed loop team under Professor Hovorka for many years and started off describing what a closed-loop is and why everyone prefers that term rather than ‘artificial pancreas’ – it’s only part of the pancreas’s job which is done by a closed-loop system, the rest works well.
Here’s Dr Thabit’s presentation:
Closed-Loop Sessions #2 – Me
Nightscout, #WeAreNotWaiting and Closed-Loops
I always think it’s good to let people know how Nightscout started although it pains me that I never have time to mention all the people involved, having instead only time to focus on a couple. So with the history of Nightscout done I moved on to talk a little about innovation and how it differs in the DIY world to commercial: PWDs just try stuff and if it works for them then great, if not they/others seek to build on or improve it. Moving on to DIY closed-loop systems I showed Dana M Lewis’s original rig – can’t believe I forgot to name drop her though :-/ – and then how things have advanced. My time-lapse video of Amy’s AndroidAPS trial played to a silent audience with some visible jaw dropping going on.
Apart from all the generated discussions which followed I’m really pleased people like Mel liked my slideshow, I just love Prezi.
Here’s my presentation:
Closed-Loop Sessions #3 – Tim Street
DIY Looping
Tim started his presentation asking the audience – and those watching the live stream – to vote on some questions he posed. It drew attention to the fact that people check their CGM/Libre many times a day, mostly once an hour, and after checking it 72% of people do something with the information they’ve just seen. Tim spoke about closed-loop systems doing some of this diabetes maths/adjustments for him and estimated that he saves one waking day of time per month now he uses a closed-loop system. He continued on describing the loop systems in detail, how the safety works for TBRs, components and providing lots of links for people to find out more.
Here’s Tim’s presentation:
Diabetes UK’s Conference Summary Video
I got paid nothing for this, but I did eat a lot of cake and chicken skewery-thingys.
I was reimbursed travel expenses which meant I also got to stop en-route and see my friend Mike on the way.
I was put up in a hotel for the night before, but after being accosted by one of the local ladies and offered things that would make a docker blush I’m not so sure this was a benefit.