Your medicine is watching you

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This is cool. A Silicon Valley startup company is working on technology that monitors pill taking by embedding a microchip the size of a grain of sand into the pill.

The company, Proteus Biomedical, says it’s in the business of “intelligent medicine,” meaning the integration of electronics, sensors and wireless communications into medical devices and pharmaceuticals.

The smart pill—which is still on the drawing board—would work something like this: a patient swallows the pill and the microchip is activated upon ingestion. The chip then puts out a high-frequency electrical current that is picked up by a receiver that is contained on a patch placed on the patient’s body. The sensor could also monitor physiological processes, such as heart rate and temperature. The data could be uploaded to a server and transmitted to the person’s doctor.

The product, which the company calls a Raisin, would help people remember when, or if, they have taken medication and would help in cases where patients must otherwise be directly observed taking their medication. But, notes the MIT Technology Review: “Privacy issues are an obvious concern.”

--Shari Roan

Photo: Sven Thoene / For The Times