FDA Approves Wearable "Artificial Pancreas" 119
kkleiner writes "The FDA has approved a device that acts as an "artificial pancreas", which both continuously monitors a patient's glucose levels and injects appropriate amounts of insulin when needed. When blood-sugar levels become low, the device from Medtronics warns the wearer and will eventually shut down. The MiniMed 530G looks to offer an on-the-go solution for the growing number of people suffering from Type 1 diabetes who have to test their blood and inject insulin throughout the day. The company plans to improve the device to make a fully automated version down the road."
Re:Type II? (Score:0, Interesting)
Type 2 diabetes is well supported by the FDA through their revolving door [rense.com] policy with Monsanto, ensuring that RoundUp and GMO crops are beyond legislation control, corn farmers get their subsidy, HFCS is so cheap that it's in all processed food, type 2 diabetes blooms across the whole population, the "health" industry reaps rich rewards, medical insurance skyrockets, disposable income for good food plummets, and the population eats more cheap delicious sugar-laden junk in a self-reinforcing cycle.
Everyone is happy, what's not to like?
Insta-death (Score:5, Interesting)
As has been covered before, airport full body scanners tend to kill medical devices like this. People have had devices like these, along with pacemakers and other equipment die after being subjected to high energy bursts of EMI; which is exactly what airport scanners do. While the goverment claims they're phasing these out, they are still in the field -- high power portable x-ray and 'mwave' scanners that are being used at customs checkpoints, or on unsuspecting civilians on the road. And then there's those pesky aircraft carriers that carry gigawatt radar scanners that on several occasions have locked people in their cars, garages, etc., due to EMI when they were passing by.
All of this kind of unregulated and largely unmonitored technology poses a very real danger to technology like this; And with so many people having diabetes, this could mean that entire towns' worth of diabetics drop dead while the government claims "it's a mystery why everyone with implantable medical devices died after we irradiated them..."
My point is; The laboratory environment these things were designed (and approved) in is very different from the environment they're going to be used in. And there's no evidence the FDA has taken this into consideration from what's provided here. Indeed, they have a poor track record of having an impartial approval process; I do not believe that 'FDA Approved' means much more than 'Scientology Approved' these days -- but this is to be expected when the FDA's income is derived directly from the companies' whose products they approve -- companies literally pay for approval. Anywhere else, this would be a clear conflict of interest. But when it comes to the safety of our food, drugs, and medical supplies... it's business as usual.
Re:Disappointed the article doesn't answer... (Score:5, Interesting)
Having worked at Medtronic, but not at the Minimed division, I would guess that it doesn't really have an OS. The HMS Plus and Magellan devices didn't contain a RealTime OS or anything similar and the Magellan was originally programmed by a pacemaker engineer before I got on the project, so they use C to make embedded software, but there's no underlying OS like VxWorks, etc.