Comment on Pinsker et al. Randomized Crossover Comparison of Personalized MPC and PID Control Algorithms for the Artificial Pancreas. Diabetes Care 2016;39:1135-1142.

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Pinsker et al. (1) compare the performance of an artificial pancreas system using a model predictive control (MPC) algorithm of their own design to the performance of the same system using a proportional integral derivative (PID) algorithm, also of their own design. They conclude that MPC performs better. The authors emphasize that MPC “comes in many flavors” but do not acknowledge the same for PID (1). Using a PID controller of their own design rather than a version that has undergone numerous design iterations, such as the Medtronic algorithm (2,3) or an interacting PID algorithm developed at Boston Children’s Hospital (4,5), makes their study less than compelling. The authors argue that they designed their MPC and PID algorithms to have “the same level of aggressiveness” but, by their own …