ProtoType One
By: Patrick Pallagi
Tags: Sports, Ironman, Type One Diabetes, Diabetes, Diabetes Solutions

ProType One Design Concept

I’m on this endeavour to help people with type one diabetes run successful marathons and even help them complete the Ironman triathlon.

How is that possible? It’s a Loonshot worth nurturing I believe and I’ve learned insights that one couldn’t find in a textbook yet.

It is because, on this journey I decided it’s time to reach out to pioneering experts like Havlik Marcell, the CEO of Diabtrend.

Diabtrend is an AI based diabetes diary application. Why is that a BIG Deal?

Let me give you some context.

To this day, I keep a record of my blood glucose measurements in a physical notebook designed for the purpose to track my blood glucose and insulin dosages.

The notebook is not so precise, it is rather based on habitual timings with measurements slots for three regularly occurring meals like “values before and after breakfast”

The doctors recommendation is to check before and within 90 minutes after the meals. But what if you have snacks in between meals? And what if you excercise?

A picture of my oldschool diabetes diary

There is always two kinds of data one can collect: qualitative and quantitative data. Diabtrend is setting a standard for medical best practice by allowing you to collect both.

The app uses a training period of two days to set trends for your glucose levels and learns more and more overtime when you use their gamified point collecting system that helps in the blood glucose prediction system they have.

In addition to this there is food and voice recognition built in to the app.

I was amazed when I first saw this technology!

That’s when I realised, perhaps it’s time to show them my first prototype.

I’m focused on pairing caloric output to the changes in blood glucose.

The aim is to be able to predict the change in plasma glucose based on the caloric performance of the athlete.

For this I developed an experimental formula and I was hoping to get some feedback from the team behind Diabtrend.

What I learned was that maybe it’s time for me to start thinking about self learning algorithms and great news : My equation could serve as a basis for one!

Marcell introduced me to a computer language I haven’t heard before. It’s called Julia.

Then he recommended I check out this TED talk with Alan Edelman, the co-inventor of the programing language.

Edelman says:

“A good programing language design is applied psychology…

It not only allows computer units to talk to computers, but it allows humans to talk to humans about their intent on the computer.”

Moreover, there are four objectives he specifies:

It creates community

enables talk between humans and machines

creates software collaboration

Benefits everyone from high performance

And thanks to the world wide web I get to part of the community of seekers who think about self learning algorithms, but there is a challenge.

For security reasons the continuous glucose monitoring sensors use an encoded data transfer method that doesn’t allow third parties to use the data.

It’s a good thing that strangers can’t hack my blood glucose readings, but the thing is… I can’t experiment with it either.

This brings us to the topic of designing experiments and one of my favourite Nobel Laureates, William D. Philips.

In year of 2019 in Lindau he said in an interview view with Adam Smith :

“I think it’s clear that there is a French approach to doing science that is different from an American approach to doing science, at least among the French scientists that I know.

Now, of course, people say these days “The World is Flat” meaning that that things tend to even out across the world and perhaps the differences are not as great as they once were.

But I appreciate those differences very much, because the way I see the difference, what we might call the classic exaggerated version of the difference between the French approach and the American approach is that the French would think of a problem first.

They would calculate everything that they could about that problem, figure out exactly what should happen, and then go into the lab and see that that they had calculated whereas the Americans would think of a problem and say, wonder if I could do that in the lab, then go into a lab and see what happens.”

For now it seems I’ll have to choose the French route and continue the progress that way until I become certified to develop my solutions.

It’s an interesting journey and I’m happy to be up for the ride.

Thank you for reading!