WNYC and Adafruit picked up on an artificial pancreas project a few months ago. There has been some real progress from a DIY hardware hacking community going by #wearenotwaiting. This group has been expanding on the work started by Seattle Couple Dana Lewis and Scott Leibrand. OpenAPS  (Artificial Pancreas System) has made some excellent strides forward with hacked insulin pumps, continuous glucose monitors, watch displays and a significant code base. A more recent podcast The Quantified Self – Tim Omer : EP43 – Learnings from Continuous Glucose Monitoring explains the technical hurdles and daily life with this setup.

Unfortunately, the price of the hardware and consumables is unbelievably expensive requiring parts to be purchased second hand through eBay and diabetic forums. The protocols for communication and exporting of data are often proprietary which has required a significant amount of reverse engineering. The supported hardware today is limited a subset of insulin pumps and CGMs.

Adafruit makes a cameo in a recent CGM battery replacement hack.