Digital Pioneer Spotlight: Nick Oliver

In line with June’s Diabetes Awareness Week, Nick is the latest in our series of Spotlights on the 2016/17 NHS Digital Pioneer Award Nominees

Nick is Wynn Professor of Human Metabolism, at Imperial College.

Nick is part of a cross-faculty multi-disciplinary group which has developed digital solutions for the challenges of type-1 diabetes self-management. These solutions include closed loop insulin delivery, diabetes prevention and support for people calculating insulin doses.

“We identified challenges with existing technologies by speaking to people with type-1 diabetes and reviewing the literature.” says Nick.”Patients told us the systems were difficult to use and didn’t take into account real-life scenarios which include exercise, stress, illness, temperature, and work.

“We set out to design a system that was adaptive, individualised, and met regulatory and safety requirements. Using artificial intelligence techniques we designed the Advanced Bolus Calculator for Diabetes (ABC4D) system, a decision support smartphone app which connects point of care with data sources worn on the body. Information on meals, activity, alcohol, stress, illness and menstrual cycle are combined with a library of personalised data to ensure that insulin dosing at mealtimes is optimised and adaptive to an individual’s needs. We have shown that the app is acceptable to people with type-1 diabetes, is usable and has an impact on blood glucose.”