Company Designs Microchip Heart Monitor Pill

[Maura]

A story on CBSNews.com via Gizmodo today might sound like science-fiction, but it’s very much science fact! CBS reports on a wireless personal health monitor called the Raisin, which has just been cleared by the FDA, and which is designed to help heart patients take their medication as prescribed. The company behind the Raisin, Proteus Biomedical, has come up with a way of putting edible microchips inside pills. Once a patient has swallowed the edible microchip in this way, a computerized skin patch worn on the arm will be able to instantly detect if medication has been taken on time, and then send a report to the patient’s iPhone via Bluetooth.

According to Proteus, the Raisin can also monitor how many pills the patient takes, as well as checking their vital signs, such as pulse, heart rate and physical activity. The information collected by the iPhone app can then be used for many different purposes, including charting medication errors and details of the patient’s condition, in order to provide an overall picture for the patient’s doctor. Proteus says that the device is currently only at the clinical trial stage, so there’s no telling when it will actually be available to the general public.

Source: CBS News, Gizmodo