The Artificial Pancreas Meetup in Barcelona, supported by Hacking Health, Nightscout Foundation, Hospital Universitari Parc Tauli and Stiftung Charité, included an impressive list of international speakers and panel members who discussed the potentials, new developments and new innovations about artificial pancreas and closed-loop insulin delivery systems. Throughout the Meetup attendees enjoyed a wide variety of presentations and talks, offering new ideas on many topics. They listened to people with diabetes (PwD) and their friends and families, developers, health care professionals, mathematicians and sociologists among others. The audience was very engaged and had an intense dialogue followed by a panel discussion with key stakeholders from the DIY community, industry and research.

Diabetes is a full-time job—and a hard one. It can interrupt your sleep and give you a hard time during the day. It can be exhausting and make you sick, as well as lead to long-term complications and depression. But with the addition of automated systems, diabetes is much more manageable. This can be seen through the outcomes of open-source loop system users.

PwD have different needs, ideas, lifestyles and issues to solve. The reason why DIY APS works perfectly for so many people is that each individual can customize and individualize their own system as needed. PwD want and need interoperability and flexibility when it comes to diabetes devices.