A 'smart friend' for diabetes patients

Measuring blood sugar and injecting insulin. This is the first thing Pau Ribas does every day. He is a 28-year-old engineer and entrepreneur who was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes at the age of 21, a chronic disease characterized by the inability of the pancreas to generate the insulin needed to regulate blood glucose. With these first two morning actions, Pau's daily routine as a diabetic patient has only just begun: throughout the day he will have to inject insulin again (in his case, four to ten times) and he will have to adjust the dose according to what he is about to eat. He will also have to calculate the amount of carbohydrates contained in each food or meal, since the intake of this component increases blood glucose (sugar) levels and diabetes patients must keep it under strict control to avoid damage to the heart, blood vessels, tissues, kidneys, and blood vessels.

Until the afternoon, Pau Ribas, like all patients with diabetes 1 and many people with diabetes 2, will still have to make more calculations and make decisions related to his disease: assess how far in advance he should inject insulin depending on whether the food he will eat contains more carbohydrates or the activity he has done before eating, his mood, or the ambient temperature, among many other factors. "This need to constantly calculate to carry out any daily activity generates pressure and an emotional burden for people with diabetes that is aggravated by anxiety or fear of not making the right decisions," says Pau Ribas.

With the aim of helping patients like him to self-manage their diabetes and provide them with the emotional support they need, Pau Ribas has created an innovative technology, called DAIA (Diabetes Artificial Intelligence Assistant), which, thanks to artificial intelligence, offers comprehensive assistance and comprehensive care. It is the "only personal and autonomous artificial intelligence agent for diabetes management" and, according to Ribas, represents "a revolution in the telemedicine market."

Help from a "very intelligent friend"

"A very intelligent friend who is a diabetes specialist." This is how Ribas defines his technology, which he has developed through the Girona company Diabetes SL in collaboration with a team made up of the doctor in biomedicine Janire Virgala, the data analyst Gerard Torrent and the programmer Gabriel Melero.

The new technology is "a friend" for the patient with diabetes because it accompanies them and gives them a hand with one of the decisions that causes them the most headaches and anguish: solving the question that they must always ask themselves before any food or meal. How many carbohydrates does it contain? Can I eat it? Do I eat it all or should I eliminate part of it? _LNA~

But this "assistant" created by Pau Ribas is not limited to calculating the carbohydrate figure. It also makes recommendations to the user because it knows the user's blood glucose data (since it is connected to the continuous glucose meter that he wears on his arm) and knows his behavior, the number of times he has eaten or injected insulin, how a type of activity affects him, etc. By interacting with this new technology, it learns everything about the user and can create completely personalized recommendations. "It even talks to me the way I talk," jokes Pau Ribas, who explains, as an example, that the application "already knows" that some days before he is going to have a beer with friends and the DAIA reminds him that he should have a snack that day because alcohol is absorbed better and thus avoids hyperglucose. At weekends, when Pau usually eats larger meals and likes to go for a walk in the afternoon, the message from his "smart friend" never fails: "Hey, Pau! How are you? Have you eaten well today? Have you taken a nap? If you go out to do some exercise, remember to take some fruit."

The technology created by this group of young entrepreneurs has won the first prize (with 4,800 euros) of the Impulsa Startup awards from the Girona Chamber of Commerce, which seeks to grow and find funding for emerging companies. With the support of the University of Girona, the project will be presented at the Mobile Congress in Barcelona next March, where the young man hopes to obtain the complicity of investors to end up implementing his technology both among users and in health centres.

Test in Girona hospitals this April

For the time being, and starting in April, the DAIA will be used as a test device in hospitals in the Girona region for all its functions except for regulating the amount of insulin to be injected into the patient, since this requires prior clinical certification. Working with endocrinologists and other health professionals at these health centres, the DAIA will be tested with basic functions, such as recognising carbohydrates in a menu, total and personalised monitoring of the disease by interconnecting personal and clinical data, and the emotional support or accompaniment that it represents as a personalised "assistant" that reduces pressure.

Ribas maintains that DAIA technology not only contributes to an improvement in the quality of life of diabetes patients, but can also help to relieve congestion in the health system. According to the engineer, the support offered to patients to make better decisions means that they end up having fewer lows or highs in blood sugar, that their quality of life improves, that the need for medication is reduced and that the deterioration of organs and tissues is minimized, thus reducing the associated costs.