By Adam Garcia
In Diabetic Technology today, we will be discussing a new innovative insulin pump design.
An industrial design student, Nicole Schmiedel, at the Braunschweig University of Arts in Germany has come up with a design for a trendy-looking wristwatch that contains an innovative ultra-light insulin pump to help people with diabetes. The watch produces its own electricity thanks to the use of piezo-electric technology originally developed for European satellites.
Nicole Schmiedel
Schmiedel wanted to design a system to improve the quality of life for diabetics and allow them to lead as normal a life as possible. Many diabetics who need multiple daily insulin injections to control their blood sugar use cumbersome syringes or even bulkier equipment which limits their mobility.
Schmiedel’s design looks like a modern wristwatch but contains a pump with sufficient insulin for two to three weeks use by a diabetic. A prototype of the novel insulin pump wristwatch named COR won one of the three Design and Technology Student Awards at this year’s MATERIALICA trade fair in Munich. It was presented for business professionals at this year’s European Space Technology Transfer Conference, an initiative of ESA’s Technology Transfer Programme Office.
COR Insulin Pump
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“I got the idea for the insulin pump wristwatch when I watched a film of a little 8-year old girl with diabetes using an insulin pump and saw what she had to go through to get her daily doses of insulin,” recalls Nicole Schmiedel, “COR looks like a watch and not a medical device,” she adds. “When the pump is not in operation the menu switches to watch mode and displays the current time and date. It also includes an alarm clock.”
Inside COR a piezo-electric transducer absorbs the energy of even the slightest movement of the person who wears it and converts it into electricity to drive the insulin pump. Conversely, pressure resulting in a deformation of the crystal shape provokes a voltage that can be measured. Being proportional with the deformation it can be used to measure the amount of pressure, or deformation. In the same way the deformation of the piezo-electric transducer from vibrations caused by any movement of COR generates a voltage which can be used to drive the insulin pump.
Piezo-electric transducer
Schmiedel has chosen the piezo-electric transducer “DuraAct” from the German company INVENT to drive her insulin pump.
Stefan Linke from INVENT GmbH stated, “The insulin pump in the COR insulin wristwatch needs around 50-100 milliwatts, which could be provided with just one DuraAct transducer. However, by using four to five transducers located around the wristband, energy generation from movement in any direction is more efficient. It is also safer as the insulin pump will continue to operate even if one transducer fails.”
The electricity is stored inside the wristwatch in accumulators ready for use. This secures a stable electricity supply even through periods of low-energy generation such as sleep.
“I was only able to design COR because the piezo-electric transducer technology had already been developed for space programmes and was ready to use,” says Schmiedel. “The next step is to find a company to produce COR and market it.”
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