Ever wondered how would it be to swallow a microchip embedded into a Pill which could help get information about various statistics of your body right on a Smartphone?

The Pill may prove as a breakthrough advancement as it cumulates technology and medicines, but is it a boon or are we just pushing the limits?

Pharmacy companies are in the process of creating a biodegradable chip embedded pill which can send vital statistical information about the patient directly to a Smartphone. Developed by Californian start-up Proteus Medical and Swiss drugmaker Novartis, the “smart pill” includes a sensor that sends vitals like heart rate or glucose level to a skin patch worn by the patient. The skin patch then sends the information to the smartphone.

The pill once consumed continuous to monitor the patients glucose level, heart rate and respiratory rate, this revolutionary invention can allow pharmacy companies to  gather more patient information than ever, however this will require a further testing to make sure it doesn’t pose a risk in the near future.

“Smart pill” is beneficial to patients, doctors and pharmaceutical companies. The speed of receiving information could be life-saving, in certain cases, if the information transmitted from the pill to the phone is faster than a trip to the doctor’s office. And if the app allows pharmaceutical companies access to the data, researchers can use the real-time patient information instead of conducting expensive clinical trials. This could be great, a person sitting in, say, London, could send the details to his doctor having an office in New York, via the internet, in a flash.

But the thought of consuming a computer chip won’t be easily swallowed. Moreover, gathering information will not be equivalent to being diagnosed and a doctor who sees the data but not the patient may miss physical manifestations of symptoms.

What do you think about the Smart Pill?

The DNetWorks Team