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Edible "Intelligent Pills"
Ian Lamont sends along a brief note from the Industry Standard about "intelligent" pills that can help doctors record information about drug dosages, heart rate, respiratory rate, and other metrics. The pills, being developed by Proteus Biomedicals, have "digestible sensors" made out of food products and are activated by stomach fluids. A receiver that is similar to a skin patch picks up the data and can be passed on to a 3G mobile network, and from there to hospitals or doctors' offices. According to the Proteus site, the sensors cost a few cents per pill. The devices, currently in clinical trials, made #8 on Wired's list of the top technology breakthroughs of 2008.
Wake me when they have edible intelligence pills.
End of lesson. You may press the button.
can be passed on to a 3G mobile network
So... how secure is this? I can't imagine anyone other than my doctor (and not even him, probably) are that interested in my biometrics, but I am not comfortable with the information being broadcast over a network.
The summary links to a stub which links to the actual article, which describes how the network-enabled system could be used:
Caregivers or relatives will know when and what pills patients have taken or if the patients failed to take their medications.
So you can watch Grandma forget to take her pills - in real time!
Oh this is going to be a boon to compliance monitoring. With that kind of 24/7 monitoring
it becomes easy to really lock down a person's life. All kinds of monitoring comes to mind,
from drug use to the absence of using prescribed medications, ingestion of approved or
unapproved foods or even 'unapproved' activities say that raise heartbeat or blood pressure
or again the lack of activities.
Anyone else reading the article think "Hot damn! Now I'll be able to do that PhD, get laid, get rich and retire in 5 years. I just have to pop lots of pills"? Sometimes reading the article (or even the summary in this case) can be a real bummer. I should've known better.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Oh you mean like when the computer displayin MRI imagery screws up? Or the computer talking between the hospital and your insurance policy? Or the computer doing traffic lights? Or the computer running your car? Or the computer reading radar data for an air control tower?
... hell, they can probably make the complex stuff work too since it's obviously worked rather well in the past.
Seriously, there ARE other companies out there making software that are not diebold and can make something as simple as a counter
..rabbit shit!"
"See, you're getting smarter already!"
Proteus ingestible event markers (IEMs) are tiny, digestible sensors made from food ingredients, which are activated by stomach fluids after swallowing.
The IEM is manufactured on silicon wafers...
Last I checked, humans cannot digest silicon, so this thing is not entirely "made from food ingredients".
Also, I would have been mighty surprised if food ingredients could transmit digital signals.
Fry: I can't swallow that!
Farnsworth: Well then, good news! It's a suppository.
And all this time the aliens have been probing my ass, when all's they had to do is make me swallow a pill.
Those bastards.
... to mix these intelligence pills with booze? That way we could break even.
Have gnu, will travel.
Nit pick, but suppositories not withstanding, most pills are edible...
Actually, most suppositories are probably edible... but I digest...errr... digress ;-)
200 bucks to buy. That's what I have trouble digesting.