Medical explication
Diabetes is a disorder that affects the way our body uses food for energy. Normally, the sugar we take in is digested and broken down to a simple sugar - glucose. The glucose circulates in our blood where it waits to enter cells to be used as fuel. Insulin (a hormone produced by the pancreas) helps move the glucose into cells. A healthy pancreas adjusts the amount of insulin based on the level of glucose. But, if you have diabetes, this process breaks down, and blood sugar levels become too high (watch this video!)
History
Aretaeos Cappedocian, coined the name "diabetes mellitus" in the second to third century AD. Diabetes is from a Greek word that means to siphon. This refers to the excessive urination seen in undiagnosed diabetics. Mellitus - comes from a Latin word that means sweet like honey - and like the urine of diabetics which contains extra sugar (glucose).
Technology
But there are good news for all these peoples - a unique miniaturized insulin-delivery pump, developed by Debiotech and industrialized by STmicroelectronics. The miniaturized disposable insulin pump combines Debiotech’s expertise in insulin delivery systems with STMicroelectronics’ strengths in manufacturing high-volume silicon-based microfluidic devices. The Nanopump is based on MEMS. Its size is: 65mm x 38mm x 11mm (27ml) with an insulin reservoir capacity of 4 to 6ml. Insulin pump therapy, is an attractive alternative to individual insulin injections that must be administered several times a day. With CSII (Continuous Subcutaneous Insulin Infusion), the patient is connected to a programmable pump including a storage reservoir, from which insulin is infused into the tissue under the skin throughout the day according to specific needs as programmed by the patient.
The principle is a volumetric membrane pump, with a pair of check valves, integrated in a MEMS chip. The chip is a stack of 3 layers bonded together: a silicon on insulator (SOI) plate with micromachined pump-structures and two Pyrex cover plates with through-holes. The MEMS chip is assembled with a piezoelectric actuator that moves the membrane in a reciprocating movement to compress and decompress the fluid in the pumping chamber. The MEMS technology used in this device allows a tight control of the pumping mechanism (each pump actuation injects only 200 nanoliters of drug).
Numbers
There are 200 million diabetics Worldwide and counting! Without proper treatment, diabetes can lead to nerve damage, kidney failure, cardiovascular disease, blindness...and death.

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