Scientists See At-Home Biohacking as Future of Medicine
The cost and regulatory environment in which drugs are currently created lead to a number of difficulties for patients, providers, and drug manufacturers. Clearances and approvals, patents, and terms of use agreements, among other things, have forced some patients to turn to “biohacking” their own medical care. Researchers at Colorado State University have been studying the biohacking movement, specifically one related to making human insulin at home, and they believe these medical pioneers are truly foreshadowing the direction that the medical industry will be forced to take.
The researchers have published a study, called The Open Insulin Project: A Case Study for ‘Biohacked’ Medicines in the journal Trends in Biotechnology. The paper reviews the current state of at-home insulin production and how this trend may develop in the future. While it was not a focus of the study, a few years ago biohackers manipulating glucometers and insulin pumps managed to introduce a basic “artificial pancreas” before the medical device firms did the same. Certainly there’s going to be a lot of biohacking with medgadgets in the future and the industry will have to get used to it.
source :https://www.medgadget.com