By Bonnie James
IN a first for Qatar and probably the region, Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar (CMUQ) is working on a novel project that aims to monitor diabetics using advanced sensors as they go about their life.
“We intend to use robotic technology to help people by combining our intelligent sensor processing skills with the expertise of Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC) and Qatar’s Supreme Council of Information and Communication Technology,” CMU-Q dean Chuck Thorpe told Gulf Times in an interview.
The project has immense potential considering that Qatar has a high incidence of diabetes among its population, and reportedly has the highest rate of diabetes among GCC countries, going by research findings of HMC experts.
“This is about using advanced, wrist-strapped, non-invasive sensors that take measurements from diabetics and finding out a host of information, including that of insulin levels,” he explained.
The sensor is smart enough to collect data and make a cell phone call to transmit it to a computer.
“The goals of the project are for the computer to give feedback to the person wearing the device and to the physician,” stated the dean.
Though things cannot be sensed directly by taking surface measurements from the body, intelligent sensor processing, which is at the heart of robotics, helps to analyse the data and arrive at conclusions.
“One of my students is using himself as a test case and now we are in the process of saying how do we apply this to a small circle of four or five people, and expand from there,” Thorpe, also an acclaimed robotics expert, said.
Given that there are many diabetics in Qatar, the technology, if it can be applied to a large group of patients, would allow physicians to be constantly informed about the condition of diabetics under their care without seeing them in person.
“If the system can tell physicians that this patient is under control and no need to worry about him, and here is a case that something unusual is happening and you need to pay attention, that would be a big help,” the dean observed.
High risk diabetics, whose insulin levels fluctuate wildly, would benefit immensely from the project.
CMU-Q’s parent institution CMU Pittsburgh in the US is renowned for its pioneering work in robotics research. Thorpe has made his mark in the field over the past two decades.
“When people hear that we are doing robotics here (CMU-Q), they think about something from the movies. But what we really like to do is much more practical, including robot cars to help with traffic safety, robotic process control in petroleum operations, and applying robotics technology in medicine” stated the dean.
The first ever field study conducted by HMC’s Molecular Genetics Laboratory last year on causes for genetic pre-disposition of Qataris to diabetes threw up some alarming facts.
“Of the 150 Qatari diabetes patients screened, 138 (92%) were found to have the hereditary gene that causes the disease,” Dr Ammar al-Rikabi, Dr Mahmoud Zarei and Prof Abdul Bari Bener, specialists who led the study, told Gulf Times in an exclusive interview published last March.
Marriages between blood relatives, sedentary lifestyle, obesity and irrational food habits are cited as the main factors for the shockingly high incidence of hereditary diabetes among Qataris.
Obesity was a major cause for diabetes, after genetic pre-disposition. About 49% of the patients, particularly women, were found to be obese.
“The inference from the study is that about 14 to 15% of Qataris, especially women, are facing a higher risk of getting hereditary diabetes,” the specialists observed.
Though it is established that the incidence of diabetes in Qatar and the rest of the Gulf is about 8% more than in the West, this is the first time that clear clinical evidence has brought out the true dimensions of the disease among nationals.
“Qatar seems to have the highest rate of diabetes among the GCC countries,” explained Dr al-Rikabi (chairman, Department of Laboratory Medicine), Dr Zarei (head, Endocrinology and Diabetes Mellitus Unit) and Prof Bener (head, Statistics Department).
International Obesity TaskForce’s chairman Prof W Philip T James had said in June 2003 during a visit to Doha that Qatar and other Gulf States now top the world in the incidence of obesity and diabetes among their nationals.
It is estimated that obesity, which has been classed as a chronic disease by the World Health Organisation, affects over 50% of the nationals in the Gulf countries and 300mn worldwide.
“One in three Qatari adults either has diabetes or glucose intolerance, a condition that dramatically predisposes them to develop diabetes in the next few years,” Prof James had said.
In an alarming change in the pattern of type 2 diabetes (wherein the pancreas secretes insulin, but the body is partially or completely unable to use it) which only used to affect adults, now younger and younger people are affected.
“Children as young as 10 are being affected by type 2 diabetes, a recent phenomenon in many parts of the world, and they are likely to be blind in 10 to 15 years and develop kidney failure,” Prof James had said then. |
