Diabetech - Diabetes Tech, Research, News How DIYers Beat Pharma to the First Automated Insulin Delivery System
Jul 28, 2025
Brandon Arbiter, Co-founder and acting CEO of Tidepool, is a type 1 diabetes advocate and innovator. He dives into the early days of diabetes data integration and the rise of DIY automated insulin delivery (AID) systems. Brandon shares his journey from misdiagnosis to developing Tidepool, which played a crucial role in FDA-clearing the Loop algorithm. He discusses the importance of community involvement, the future of proactive diabetes care with personalized algorithms, and his advice for aspiring builders in diabetes tech.
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Data Integration Was The Missing Piece
- Brandon saw two high-volume device streams (pump and CGM) with no unified view and treated it as a data-integration problem.
- He realized connecting these sources would enable data-driven diabetes decisions similar to supply-chain analytics.
A Wedding Conversation Opened Big Doors
- Brandon met Jamie, a Medtronic employee, at a wedding and showed her his app which led to an introduction to Medtronic engineers.
- That connection opened doors to influential diabetes leaders and accelerated Tidepool's growth.
The Night Ben Hacked The Pump
- Ben West remotely suspended Brandon's Medtronic pump from his computer to demonstrate remote pump control.
- Ben published the pump commands on GitHub, enabling others to build on that capability.