# SCH: Striking a Balance: Trust and Privacy in Using Adolescents' Data for Diabetes Self-Management

> **NIH NIH R01** · UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO · 2024 · $278,075

## Abstract

We propose a whole person-centered approach for the development of artificial pancreas devices (AP) that
automates insulin delivery for adolescents and young adults with type-1 diabetes. The proposed approach
will enhance existing AP devices by means of "smart nudges" based on real-time indicators of planned and
ongoing activity, cognitive load, and psychosocial measures like mood and stress. These nudges will help
individuals with type 1 diabetes adapt their behaviors such as meals, physical activity and insulin bolusing
to the AP device in order to maintain their blood glucose levels inside a tight "euglycemic" range while
avoiding adverse events linked to extremely low and high blood glucose levels. Our proposed person-
centered artificial pancreas (PCAP) approach will enhance existing control systems to reflect more
nuanced understandings of users’ physiological, cognitive, psychosocial, and behavioral states and support
users’ lived experiences of managing chronic conditions in continuous collaboration with assistive devices.
Using real-time data on the physiological state (blood glucose, heart-rate, physical activity, and illness);
behavioral data from user interactions with the device; and measures of cognitive load, stress, attention
and trust obtained through carefully designed short questionnaires, PCAP will build whole person models
that track mental states including situational awareness, cognitive load, attention, and stress in order to
predict future behaviors. These models will be used by a decision-making algorithm to determine the
parameters for a nudge, including content, importance and frequency. Our multidiscplinary team will also
investigate the design of a user-interface for delivering these nudges and tracking the user response to
them. A series of feasibility/preclinical user studies involving adolescents are proposed in order to evaluate
the correctness, reliability, and efficacy of the proposed PCAP system. Important longer-term issues
surrounding trust and privacy will be carefully investigated to inform the design of PCAP. The proposed
multicomponent cognitive models will incorporate ideas from a variety of fields including human–computer
interaction, psychology, mobile systems, probabilistic modeling, inference, learning and control, with a
particular focus on establishing an empirical basis for effective patient "nudging" to improve diabetes self-
management without increasing workload or drawing undue attention to the patient’s condition. While the
focus of the project is on the treatment of type-1 diabetes, the proposed fundamental techniques will extend
to the management of other chronic conditions where the integration of wearable sensors and mobile
devices as part of multicomponent interventions can also guide the adoption and maintenance of healthy
behaviors. The proposed research will also investigate important aspects of user privacy and ethical
considerations in assistive medical devices like PCAP, given the...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10880723
- **Project number:** 5R01AT012288-03
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO
- **Principal Investigator:** Stephen Voida
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2024
- **Award amount:** $278,075
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2022-09-20 → 2026-06-30

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10880723

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10880723, SCH: Striking a Balance: Trust and Privacy in Using Adolescents' Data for Diabetes Self-Management (5R01AT012288-03). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-24 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10880723. Licensed CC0.

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