Bigfoot Biomedical Makes Footprint in Insulin Dosing With McGill University Leave a comment
Bigfoot Biomedical, a Milpitas, California-based startup medtech focused on diabetes treatment, has made public its newfangled team-up with McGill University centered around a reinforcement learning algorithm for insulin titration. Developers from the school assembled the algorithm in the interest of finding out how well individuals with diabetes requiring insulin treatment respond to a specific dosage. The algorithm then calculates a recommendation for adjusting said dose based on the responses observed in the body following administration of the initial dose. This innovation could be quite the boon for healthcare professionals in their never-ending quest to enhance diabetes care in the modern age, giving them an advanced tool to help determine insulin dosage and its frequency.
Bigfoot Unity, the company’s product simplifying CGMs and their data production that also features a “smart” insulin pen cap that incorporates CGM data, was used to test the algorithm in an in-silico retrospective study. Looking at data from 20 patients, the study showed high accuracy in predictions for how healthcare providers would adjust insulin dosing.
“The retrospective study performed by the McGill University team demonstrates strong promise for the algorithm’s ability to help further simplify diabetes management,” said Jeffrey Brewer, Bigfoot’s CEO. “We look forward to the responsibility of taking the necessary next steps to bring their innovation to the diabetes community, including research and development to incorporate the algorithm into the Bigfoot Unity platform and collaborating with the FDA on the appropriate regulatory pathway.”
