The Duchess of Cornwall has hailed an artificial pancreas created by medical researchers to give type 1 diabetes patients control of their lives as “brilliant”.

During a visit to Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge, Camilla was shown the innovative technology being trialled in the UK which mimics the human body and automatically gives patients the right amount of insulin, ending the need for constant monitoring and injections.

Speaking at the end of her visit the duchess said: “Having seen this artificial pancreas – and being a technophobe I shouldn’t really have understood what it does – it looked quite simple and completely brilliant.”

The artificial pancreas, which researchers hope to make commercially available in the future, consists of a small skin sensor which sends data about glucose levels to a smartphone installed with software which tells a small pump how much insulin to administer to a patient.

Camilla heard first-hand from young patients and their families about the problems of living with type 1 diabetes and met some of the team behind the project based at the Cambridge Clinical Research Centre, part of the NHS’s research arm.

Parents said they would get up more than six times a night to check their child’s blood glucose level and give injections if needed.

The duchess added: “I’m sure it’s going to change the lives of a lot of you and a lot of your children in the very near future.

“They just have to get it through the right channels, find the money and make everyone believe in it because I feel sure this is going to save so many lives and make so many lives easier to deal with.”

For type 1 diabetes sufferers their pancreas does not produce enough of the hormone insulin which controls blood glucose so, after regular finger-prick blood tests, they have to inject themselves with insulin to make sure they have the right level of blood glucose.

If it is too high, long-term problems include blindness and kidney disease, and if it is too low, a patient could become confused and fall into a coma.

Dr Roman Hovorka, from Cambridge University, leads the team which has been working on the system since 2006 and is financially supported by the charity JDRF, formerly called the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, of which Camilla is president.

Dr Hovorka, a professor of diabetes technology, told Camilla the secret to the pump was replicating the work of nature: “This is what our clever body does all the time without us knowing it.”

Camilla asked about Theresa May, who was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes late in life and uses a sensor to measure her blood glucose levels.

The duchess met Rob Hewlett, 41, from Cambridge, who discovered he had the same condition as the Prime Minister when he woke up in a Sydney hospital after collapsing on a flight while travelling in Australia aged 26.

He told Camilla the threat of suffering from low glucose, known as hypoglycemia, when asleep is a constant worry: “The night time is the scary time because you’re asleep and you don’t know what’s going on.”

Mr Hewlett, who has helped test the artificial pancreas, added: “In the diabetic community there’s a think called DIB – dead in bed. You have a severe hypo and you don’t wake up – that’s something that plays constantly on my mind, but with this system it’s like a little guardian angel.”