Black-box Model Identification of Physical Activity in Type-l Diabetes Patients

In this paper we consider the problem of predicting future values of glucose in type-1 diabetes. In particular, we investigate the benefit of including physical activity, measured by an off-the-shelf wearable device, to other physiologic signals frequently used to predict blood-glucose concentration, namely injected insulin, carbohydrates intake, and past glucose samples measured by a Continuous Glucose Monitoring (CGM) sensor. Derivation of individualized predictors is crucial to cope with the wide inter- and intra-subject variability: learning and updating patient-specific models of the glucose-insulin system and using them to design personalized control actions has the potential to improve substantially patients’ quality oflife. On data collected by 6 subjects for 5 days, we identify a black-box liner model that uses insulin and meal as inputs and glucose as output. Prediction Error Method (PEM) is used for parameter estimation. The personalized model is employed to derive patient-tailored predictors. This procedure is then repeated using a further physiological input, accounting for physical activity. The prediction accuracy of the two models, including or not physical activity, was compared on the basis of two metrics commonly used in system identification, namely Coefficient of Determination (COD) and Root Mean Squared Error. The models identified with physical activity have better performance, increasing the 3-hr prediction COD by mean ± standard deviation of 18.5% ± 30.1%.