Dana Lewis texted her pancreas on Thursday. Of course, the text wasn’t the typical “Hey, what’s up?” or “You free tonight?” Instead, it was a command to give her blood’s glucose level a little boost - she needed to give herself a bit of a buffer ahead of a big speech.
As you might have guessed, Lewis’ pancreas isn’t typical, either. It’s a DIY model that the health communications professional built in 2013 and has been refining since. It uses hardware to help her insulin pump and glucose-monitoring device work together. It communicates with her phone, too. But here’s the real innovation: her “pancreas” can mostly take care of her insulin without her intervention - meaning she doesn’t have to continually fiddle with shots or check her insulin levels. She can just live her life.
