using advanced mathematics to achieve
personalised medicine for complex diseases
Artificial Pancreas
Our flagship application is machine-intelligent Artificial Pancreas software, designed to interrogate medical data to construct personalised diabetes models for people with Type-1 diabetes, and then generate suggested insulin infusion control laws to improve control of blood glucose, steering it to desired levels and keeping it there.
In 2011 Dr Jenny Gunton, of the Garvan Institute of Medical Research and Dr Nigel Greenwood, of NeuroTech Research Pty Ltd, were awarded an Innovative grant by the JDRF in New York, to demonstrate the prototype Neuromathix Artificial Pancreas. Dr Greenwood is a mathematician specialising in artificial intelligence, while Dr Gunton is Head of the Diabetes and Transcription Factors Group at the Garvan. With additional funding provided by the Queensland Government and by the directors of NeuroTech Research Pty Ltd, the team used a mix of simulated and actual human diabetic data to demonstrate the software, with spectacular results (see News).
One of the purposes of this project was to demonstrate that existing medical hardware used for diabetes therapies (insulin pumps and continuous glucose monitors) can have its performance transformed simply by using sophisticated mathematics and high-performance computing.
A dedicated start-up company, Diabetes Neuromathix Pty Ltd, has now been formed to complete the clinical study and trialling of this software and engage in worldwide commercialisation of this intellectual property, to improve therapies for Type-1 and the insulin-using subset of Type-2 diabetes.
Given that the US FDA has a dedicated track for artificial pancreas candidates (due to their urgent need) and the extremely stable, safe design of the Neuromathix Artificial Pancreas, it is anticipated that we reach the market by late 2016, provided sufficient funding is achieved to enable a suitable clinical study and clinical trials.