meh still it seems extremely trivial for pretty much any well funded startup to do... and extremely surprising that it does not exist. i mean if theranos can exist, why the hell is this problem not solved?
Well funded start-ups (and established players) are all working on this. Given that the market is huge and Diabetes is yours for life you can bet that a lot of clever people have spent a lot of time on this. Not all of the companies that work on this problem have made it, on top of that it is a patent minefield. It will take you a few 10's of millions of $ or Euros to get to market and you would need to do everything right the first time. Then you still don't know much about how your device will function in the field until enough time has passed that you can judge by the returns where you got it wrong. Doing a respin is expensive.
So, Theranos can exist, and if the money that had gone to Holmes and then this indeed would be a solved problem. But it didn't. Note that there are pumps with a closed loop option on the market today, but they are neither convenient nor simple to use. It is work in progress. I fully expect a simple to use closed loop system to be available in quantity somewhere in the next year or two based on recent market research. The time is indeed ripe. The basic tech is there and the pumps have achieved a level of miniaturization and reliability that it is feasible, there are still problems to overcome but those are all within the realm of the possible, do not require unobtanium and enough parties are working on it (competition is fierce) that at least one of them will solve it within that time frame.
It's surprisingly tricky to measure chemical concentrations continuously without replacing the "sensor". Blood and other liquids attack and clog everything.
Without continuous glucose monitoring, you can't do artificial pancreasing.
So, Theranos can exist, and if the money that had gone to Holmes and then this indeed would be a solved problem. But it didn't. Note that there are pumps with a closed loop option on the market today, but they are neither convenient nor simple to use. It is work in progress. I fully expect a simple to use closed loop system to be available in quantity somewhere in the next year or two based on recent market research. The time is indeed ripe. The basic tech is there and the pumps have achieved a level of miniaturization and reliability that it is feasible, there are still problems to overcome but those are all within the realm of the possible, do not require unobtanium and enough parties are working on it (competition is fierce) that at least one of them will solve it within that time frame.