4 ms·

Yes it's always worth remembering the alternative. In this case, the algorithm insulin_dose(blood_glucose, activity, carbohydrate, fat, protein, time_of_da

Yes it's always worth remembering the alternative. In this case, the algorithm insulin_dose(blood_glucose, activity, carbohydrate, fat, protein, time_of_day, time_of_month, is_saturn_in_retrograde, **kwargs) has to get run: Either a microcontroller does it or a person (tired? hungry? intoxicated? distracted?) has to do do it in their head.

nwallin 5y ago
Sure, but a tired/hungry/drunk/distracted human failure mode is "fuck it, it was 22 units 12 this morning, 22 units yesterday evening, 22 units yesterday morning, I'll just do 22 units." A tired/drunk/hungry/distracted human isn't going to calculate a dose of -1 units of insulin and inject 4,294,967,295 units.
- ThalesX 5y ago
  What would stop a tired/drunk/hungry/distracted human from overdosing as they sometimes do?
  - Aloha 5y ago
    or underdosing. Like, software can have failsafes and error handling, but at some point any healthcare product may require user intervention.
    - khuey 5y ago
      In this particular use case, overdosing is a far worse failure mode than underdosing.
- icehawk 5y ago
  Exactly, a human won't won't dose 4,294,967,295 units, but dosing 4 units instead of 2 units is still a thing can drop you to 30mg/dl, as has happened with my SO.
- heisenzombie 5y ago
  Yes, it's possibly true that failure modes could be more extreme. Practically, in the discussed system the pumps themselves have built-in maximum boluses so the control-loop is limited in how badly it can fuck up. Of course, you have to trust the pump firmware... That said, I've done some pretty stupid shit. Like the time I injected a huge bolus of novorapid, thinking I was doing my Lantus shot. Ugh.