UC Davis Health’s AI-powered solution for type 1 diabetes management

UC Davis Health. A man programming his write tracker.

About 2 million Americans — including over 300,000 children and adolescents — live with type 1 diabetes, or T1D. T1D is an autoimmune disease where immune system cells mistakenly attack insulin-producing cells, leaving the body unable to produce enough insulin to control blood sugar. Consistently monitoring blood glucose to maintain balanced levels, particularly for kids and their parents, is a constant mental drain.  

Enter BeaGL, a “metabolic watchdog” that uses machine learning to predict glucose changes and send alerts to devices like smartwatches before the patient has to take immediate action — aiming to reduce the cognitive load on patients. BeaGL was created by researchers at the University of California Davis and UC Davis Health who were inspired by their own personal experiences with managing T1D. 

"It's the ultimate goal that the international diabetes community is working towards," said Stephanie Crossen, M.D., a pediatric endocrinologist, diabetes researcher and associate professor at UC Davis Health. "It would be a complete game-changer, especially for this adolescent and young adult age group, and it would allow these young people to function more typically and not have to be their own pancreas. It's hard to even quantify the potential of a system like that."

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