Medical Assistant Mobile Application for Diabetes Control by Simulating a Compartmental Model

Abstract

This paper presents an educational mobile assistant application for type 1 diabetes patients. The proposed application is based on four mathematical models that describe the glucose-insulin-glucagon dynamics using a compartmental model, with additional equations to reproduce aerobic exercise, gastric glucose absorption by the gut, and subcutaneous insulin absorption. The medical assistant was implemented in Java and deployed and validated on several smartphones with Android OS. Multiple daily doses can be simulated to perform intensive insulin therapy. As a result, the proposed application shows the influence of exercise periods, food intakes, and insulin treatments on the glucose concentrations. Four parameter variations are studied, and their corresponding glucose concentration plots are obtained, which show agreement with simulators of the state of the art. The developed application is focused on type-1 diabetes, but this can be extended to consider type-2 diabetes by modifying the current mathematical models.