Automatic control of blood glucose concentration for intensive care patients
The GLUCOSTAT project will develop a first to the market, fully integrated, biotechnology device that will enable automatic
control of blood glucose levels for patients in ICUs. This will improve the clinical outcomes for the patient as their blood
glucose concentration will be maintained in the healthy normal concentration range (4-6 mM). Automatic blood glucose
control will also decrease the workload on nurses as they no longer need to take frequent blood samples which will allow this
valuable resource to be re-directed to more valuable roles within the intensive care wards. A move away from discrete
sampling to an automatic control system that maintains low fluctuations will result in a cost reduction of €2,638 per intensive
care unit (ICU) patient and hence be more resource and labour efficient. With an estimated 1.25 million sepsis/diabetes
patients in the EU who will most benefit from continuous glucose monitoring (CGM), the total cost savings of implementing
GLUCOSTAT will be in the order of €3.3 billion.
The GLUCOSTAT project will optimise FLOW’s existing Diramo system and process used for its manufacture, and integrate
the advanced control algorithm from Technical University of Denmark (DTU) to enable FLOW to apply for CE certification.
The performance of the optimised CE marked device will then be evaluated by performing a clinical study where we will
automatically control the blood glucose level of ICU patients to stay within the normal 4-6 mM range. This will demonstrate
the automated blood glucose control system’s effectiveness in terms of delivering good accuracy, usability and robustness,
which will enable FLOW to carry out post project commercialisation and market activities. Once the automatic control system
has been launched, penetrated the market, and proved itself in patients with sepsis and diabetes, a market potential of €4.5
billion can be achieved for FLOW by implementing the device across all ICU patients in the EU and USA.