A Correction Insulin Bolus Delivery Strategy for Decision Support Systems in Type 1 Diabetes

Management of type 1 diabetes (T1D) requires affected individuals to perform multiple daily actions to keep their blood glucose levels within the safe rage and avoid adverse hypo-/hyperglycemic episodes. Decision support systems (DSS) for T1D are composite tools that implement multiple software modules aiming to ease such a burden and to improve glucose control. At the University of Padova, we are developing a new DSS that currently integrate a smart insulin bolus calculator for optimal insulin dosing and a rescue carbohydrate intake advisor to tackle hypoglycemia. However, a module specifically targeting hyperglycemia, that suggests the administration of corrective insulin boluses (CIB), is still missing. For such a scope, this work aims to assess a recent literature methodology, proposed by Aleppo et al., which provides a simple strategy for dealing with hyperglycemia. The methodology is tested retrospectively on clinical data of individuals with T1D. In particular, here we leveraged a novel in silico tool that first identifies a non-linear model of glucose-insulin dynamics on data, then uses such model to simulate and compare the glucose trace obtained by "replaying" the recorded scenario and the glucose trace obtained using the CIB delivery strategy under evaluation. Results show that the CIB delivery strategy significantly reduce the percentage of time spent in hyperglycemia (-15.63%) without inducing any hypoglycemic episode, demonstrating both safety and efficacy of its use. These preliminary results suggest that the CIB delivery strategy proposed by Aleppo et al. is a promising candidate to be included in our system to counteract hyperglycemia. Future work will extensively evaluate the methodology and will compare it against other competing approaches.