We have smart cars, smart lights, smart phones. Now, we're entering the realm of smart pills - medication that's tech-enhanced to let your doctor know whether you've taken it or not. Health tracking technology is evolving from wearable... To edible. "Proteus has invented an ingestible sensor and this is a very small medical device," said Dr. George Savage, Proteus Digital Health’s co-founder. We're talking grain of sand or poppy seed small. The device is a sensor aiming to solve a big problem. "Fewer than half of all patients pretty much anywhere in the world take their medicines correctly," Savage added. But with the sensor embedded in a pill, physicians can track their patients' prescription intake. The sensor's safe to consume and is FDA approved. It's activated by acid in your stomach and sends a heartbeat-like signal to an adhesive bandage worn by the patient. "That bandage is recording your rest and your activity and your heart rate and it's also listening for the identifier of the pills you've taken," Savage said. A Bluetooth connection with the patient's smartphone collects the data from the bandage and encrypts it. "The patient can elect to share the information with the physician but then it remains private between the two of them," said Savage. Initially, select medical centers are using the sensors with medications such as ones for hypertension, but expansion is on the horizon. "I can envision a day when there would be no real indication to have what we would refer to as a "dumb" drug. Why wouldn't you want a smart drug that has information and feedback built into it from the factory?" Savage asked. Powering technology in the pit of your stomach from the palm of your hand. The company that developed the sensor, Proteus, is conducting a trial for it with pediatric patients at a Dallas hospital. It involves young patients recovering from an organ transplant, who generally have to be on a very regimented medication schedule. Source
Though privacy advocates worry that digestible sensors might herald unparalleled new forms of surveillance, Proteus’s executives say they’re out to fix a long-standing and often fatal problem: Up to half of patients in developed countries don’t follow prescribed treatments for chronic illnesses, leading to additional health complications and costs, according to the World Health Organization. By one estimate, medication nonadherence causes 125,000 deaths annually in the United States alone.
