Intelligent blood glucose control in diabetic patients: design and simulation of an artificial pancreas

Background: Diabetes mellitus (DM) is a common chronic disease with diverse complications. About 10% of the earth's population suffer from this disease. For smart control of the blood glucose in DM patients, an artificial pancreas was designed and simulated by a predictive sliding mode controller considering the time delay of insulin effect. Method: In this method, one of the time-delay glucose-insulin models was first selected. Then, using the model predictive sliding mode control, the stability of the glucose and insulin concentration of the blood was considered as the target. The performance and efficiency of the design were then verified by simulating the parameters of the proposed model in MATLAB software. Results: Using the proposed method, despite considering a 25-minute time delay from insulin injection to its effect, the glucose and insulin concentrations reached stability in 60 and 50 min, respectively. Conclusions: The results of this study indicate that the combined controller of the predictive sliding mode model control is able to control blood glucose more effectively than previous controllers and therefore can help reduce disease complications, improve patients' quality of life, and reduce costs and individual and health systems.