M-CDS: Mobile Carbohydrate Delivery System

Abstract

When patients with type 1 diabetes (T1D) are physically active, they encounter an issue with keeping their blood glucose (BG) stable. Generally, their blood glucose level (BGL) will drop, causing hypoglycaemia which can have fatal consequences. The simple solution is to consume carbohydrates in the form of liquids or food, but during physical activities, it can be difficult to follow their BGL at the same time as they exercise. This thesis presents the design and implementation of a mobile carbohydrate delivery system, M-CDS. Previous work has shown that it is possible to create a stationary carbohydrate delivery system that reads the user’s BG data in real-time, gives feedback to the user when their BGL is nearing hypoglycaemia, and issues a dose of juice with 15 grams of carbohydrates. The proof-of-concept system in this thesis has the same functions but is contained within a modified CamelBak backpack. A Raspberry Pi, together with various sensors and a peristaltic pump, can transfer juice from a drinking reservoir to a drinking tube, which the user can easily drink from while physically active. The results show that the backpack works as intended and was able to avoid a BGL under 3.9 mmol/L while testing the system with a user using physical activity, thus successfully avoiding a hypoglycaemic event. As the system is a proof-of-concept, many things can be improved or modified to create a more robust, user-friendly, compact, and complex system. However, creating a prototype proved to be a time-costly project, whereas future work can use this project as a base to further improve it.