{"id":20246,"date":"2015-12-26T06:46:52","date_gmt":"2015-12-26T14:46:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2015\/12\/the-bionic-pancreas-harbinger-of-a-new-era-in-organ-replacement"},"modified":"2017-06-04T20:17:11","modified_gmt":"2017-06-05T03:17:11","slug":"the-bionic-pancreas-harbinger-of-a-new-era-in-organ-replacement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2015\/12\/the-bionic-pancreas-harbinger-of-a-new-era-in-organ-replacement","title":{"rendered":"The bionic pancreas: harbinger of a new era in organ replacement?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\\'blog-photo\\' href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/the-bionic-pancreas-harbinger-of-a-new-era-in-organ-replacement.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>If you haven\u2019t heard of the bionic pancreas, it\u2019s likely you soon will. With diabetes on the rise and the demand for insulin therapies becoming a real pain point for the medical establishment, the need for innovative solutions has spiked. Back in April, we reported on the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.extremetech.com\/extreme\/202844-engineer-dads-to-the-rescue-diy-glucose-monitoring-and-the-first-true-artificial-pancreas\">Do-It-Yourself Pancreas system<\/a>, a closed-loop artificial pancreas scavenged from a Medtronic pump, Dexcom CGM, a Raspberry Pi, and CareLink USB. Now a fully <a href=\"http:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/bionicpancreas\/\">bionic pancreas<\/a> similar in design to the Do-It-Yourself model is being developed by doctors at Massachusetts General Hospital and Boston University, with the goal of winning FDA approval. If it succeeds, this will likely be the first bionic organ to see widespread adoption.<\/p>\n<p>Let\u2019s examine some of the previous attempts at bionic organs to see if we can catch a glimpse of where things are heading and some of the societal repercussions that lay in wait. The holy grail of bionic organs is without question the human heart. Coronary artery disease being one of the principal causes of the death worldwide, a fully functioning bionic heart could radically change life expectancy and alter the demographic landscape.<\/p>\n<p>The first bionic hearts, designed over 70 years ago, were plagued by problems that often resulted in thromboembolism and hemorrhage, and made this even more of a gamble than donor transplants. Recent technological advances, however \u2014 specifically the advent of bio-prosthetic materials that fool the human immune system into believing the bionic heart is an organic part of the body \u2014 could indicate a new era of artificial organs is upon us.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.extremetech.com\/extreme\/219757-the-bionic-pancreas-harbinger-of-a-new-era-in-organ-replacement\" target=\"_blank\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If you haven\u2019t heard of the bionic pancreas, it\u2019s likely you soon will. With diabetes on the rise and the demand for insulin therapies becoming a real pain point for the medical establishment, the need for innovative solutions has spiked. Back in April, we reported on the Do-It-Yourself Pancreas system, a closed-loop artificial pancreas scavenged [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":360,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,1499,1635,1501],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20246","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-cyborgs","category-materials","category-transhumanism-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20246","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/360"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20246"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20246\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":68961,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20246\/revisions\/68961"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20246"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20246"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20246"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}