Building an Open Source Artificial Pancreas

Featuring: Sarah Withee

Event Sponsor: CAS and Improving

Event Link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88351119526

SUMMARY:

Have you ever thought about if open source software could solve change lives?

The medical industry promised a system to help automatically manage insulin diabetics and never delivered. Then people started to reverse engineer their glucose sensors and insulin pumps to build their own systems. As a diabetic, I built it too and saw my sugar values stabilize more reliably than I could ever do manually.

I want to talk about the Open Artificial Pancreas System, from a technical side and a personal side. You’ll see how it works, the problems it solves, and its safety and security concerns. You’ll see how, through data, I can tell my health is improving. Finally, you’ll see how software developers can change lives through the code we write.

BIO:

Sarah Withee is a polyglot software engineer, public speaker, teacher and mentor, and hardware and robot tinkerer located in Pittsburgh, PA. She has a passion for technology and has ever since she wrote her first computer programs in elementary school. She captivates audiences with both popular and powerful technical and anecdotal talks. She gives workshops to teach programming and hardware building to women in tech, as well as to students of all ages. She’s mentored middle and high school robotics teams to world championships. She’s even co-organized six conferences. She has giant two socially friendly human-loving cats that will happily join her virtual calls.