Ana Gabriela Gallardo

"Diabetes is one of the biggest problems in public health in Mexico, which ranks 10th place worldwide in number of diabetes patients. More than 10 million Mexicans are affected by this chronic disease, which has become one of the leading causes of death in the country. Some of the problems posed by diabetes mellitus type 1, which appears frequently in children and young people, are that the treatment currently involves multiple, daily injections; hospitalizations can last several days; and the need to customize each treatment according to the activities performed by the patient. In short, it involves a high degree of uncertainty and a great burden for both the child and their family.

To improve patients´ quality of life has been the source of Ana Gabriela Galindo´s motivation, which has led her to develop a more advanced control technique that is a viable alternative to facilitate treatment.

The current trend is consists of control tools (also known as controllers) that use a very large number of parameters which must be measured in each patient, introducing the risk of overdose when the parameters of each patient vary as well as a high degree of uncertainty. Ana Gabriela has designed a control tool which is insensitive to these parameters and allows the dosage to be automated and facilitates patient treatments. Throughout a sensor associated with a controller, the system captures real-time data relating to the glucose concentration in the blood of each patient and customizes the dosage accordingly.

The use of these more advanced controllers bring an improvement in the quality of life of patients while reducing the cost of treatment, because it uses only the amount of medication required.

This system not only has great potential in terms of the automation of insulin dosages but may also be applied to early diagnosis, minimizing the side effects of collateral medications such as anesthesia and reduce the cost of some therapies."