Paper Mounted CPUs

Roland Piquepaille writes "Rafe Needleman discovered an interesting young Swedish company which is printing really cheap chips. "The company, Cypak, has technology to mount a very small microprocessor, which it created, on paper (or inside a credit card), as well as a technique to print sensors, switches, and very short-range antennae on the same paper, using special conductive inks." Here is one possible application designed for drug trials. "Drug trials need data about how and when subjects consume the drugs being tested. In this application, a pill pack registers when individual pills are popped out of their plastic bubbles; it then can beep and ask the user a question like, 'Are you feeling better today? Press Yes or No.' (The answer buttons are on the pack itself.) When the patient visits the doctor, the package is placed on a Cypak reader and the data is downloaded to the physician's computer." Visit this page for more information about Cypak or read the full Business 2.0 article."

Comments

Text from the "blog"

[Anonymous Coward]

so you dont have to /. fella's "blog", why you had to link it is beyond me when all he is doing is quoting the business text anyway, maybe he is short on hits to read his dribble and rantings and thought slasdot might be interested


Cypak mounts
CPUs on paper. Can disposable PCs be far off?

Rafe Needleman discovered an interesting young Swedish company which is
printing really cheap chips. Here are some excerpts of his article,
"Coming Soon: Printed Computers."

The company, Cypak , has technology to mount
a very small microprocessor, which it created, on paper (or inside a credit
card), as well as a technique to print sensors, switches, and very short-range
antennae on the same paper, using special conductive inks.

Here is one possible application designed for drug trials.

Drug trials need data about how and when subjects consume the drugs
being tested. In this application, a pill pack registers when individual pills
are popped out of their plastic bubbles; it then can beep and ask the
user a question like, "Are you feeling better today? Press Yes or No."
(The answer buttons are on the pack itself.) When the patient visits the doctor,
the package is placed on a Cypak reader and the data is downloaded to the
physician's computer.

Certus, a drug-testing company, has just begun testing Cypak's
technology. Compared with logging and "compliance" products that use more
traditional computer parts and sensors, the Cypak technology is less expensive.
The chips embedded in the paper drug packages cost only a buck or two, and the
scanners that read the data from the used packages are inexpensive as well --
less than $10, Cypak CEO Jakob Ehrensvärd says. Also, the data is more reliable
than the logs that patients might keep.

Rafe Needleman is quite optimistic about Cypak's future.

It's clear that more and more items, like shipping boxes, eventually
will be able to monitor themselves, and that an increasing number of devices
will support some kind of authentication feature. Cypak-like technology will
play a part in this.

Cypak's technology currently costs a dollar or more per unit. That's
pretty cheap for a computer, but still too expensive for everyday products.
Still, there are solid industry-specific applications for this technology --
enough, most likely, to make a success out of Cypak.

More information about Cypaq's intelligent pharmaceutical packaging can be
found at their Electronic
Compliance Packaging webpage.

My thought

[Anonymous Coward]

I certainly hope nobody thinks this is revolutionary?
Set your time travel machine to the 60's. The 1960s. I would have loved to be my age (30) in the 60s. EVERYTHING was already done back then...
TFT history
Just search for 'paper' in that article if you're one of those hyper-active now-now-now-now types.

Ironically, it's Windows-only!

[Tsar]

From the FAQ:
"...our COM/ActiveX interface component can be used to get data from the ECP directly to Excel for example. Some VB scripting is required to do the plumbing with the specific customer application."

So until somebody writes the requisite API, your application has to be Windows-based to read patient data from these packages. I called that ironic because their site is apparently on a Linux box.

Re:Call me a luddite, but...

[Overt Coward]

Pen marks have a few problems... first of all, there's no timestamp on them, so you can't verify that the patient filled it out at the time they took the medication (see below). Secondly, there's the issue of stray marks -- was that something the patient checked off or not?

As for just telling the doctor (or more likely, a nurse or PA) at the appointment, you have the problem of does the patient accurately remember the details from a few days (or weeks) ago, or are they just guessing. (This goes also for the patient who just fills out their paper card right before the appointment.) In a clinical trial, accurate data is very, very important and any mechanism that will increase the likelihood of collecting all of the required data with fewer chances for incorrect data is a good thing.