Telemedicine: insulin pump controlled via the Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM).

In the future, the delivery of drugs using telemetric techniques will become more and more important. In the present investigations an experimental insulin pump has been developed which is remote-controlled via a computer program and the Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM). The commands for pump control are transferred in encrypted form via the Short Message Service (SMS). The pump can be programmed in advance for a time period of 24 h. An integrated sensor gives exact information about the number of steps executed by the stepping motor which is controlling the drug release. Model experiments show that there is almost no delay between sending the control SMS and execution of the commands by the pump.