The European, Latin American & Caribbean Artificial Pancreas Assistant

The objective of the ELCAP project is to improve advanced technological treatment of diabetes based on the Artificial Pancreas (AP) concept, with particular emphasis on the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (LAC). This will allow the support of patients in coping with insulin treated diabetes, which is perhaps the most challenging and widely spread self-management disease. The ultimate goal is to improve the patients' quality of life.

To achieve this goal the partners will join efforts in combining engineering and medical knowledge and experience in order to improve the AP and perform clinical tests in the EU and LAC countries. In addition, the current project will individualize the control algorithms tailored to the specific needs of the clinical data, diet and lifestyle of the region, and also to give clinical evidence of the feasibility and benefits of closed-loop glucose control. While the feasibility of some AP control algorithms has been shown in Europe and United of States, this would be the first ones tested clinically in the LAC.

To this end, ELCAP will develop a decision support system (DSS) able to collect monitoring data (continuous glucose, glycaemia, insulin) and lifestyle parameters (diet and physical activity data) to help understand the dietary and behavioral impact in the management of diabetes. The DSS will extract temporal patterns concerning the effect of each patient's lifestyle on metabolic control. Hence, health professionals can be aware of risk situations, which could be used to adjust and improve usual insulin delivery. The AP complemented by the DSS will assist the individual on the burden of continuous decision-making on insulin dosing, improving patient wellbeing.