Gadgetell | Tech News, Reviews, and Interesting Things

You may or may not have noticed that along with the previously mentioned “Blu,“ the letter “i” has become prefixed to every product known to man.  Obviously, Apple has all the right in the world to do that (as they really popularized it) but Phillips is making a name for themselves with this “prefix-stealing,“ after the goLITE Blu.  Get ready for the iPill (the intelligent pill). 
Most of us already know what camera pills are (pill sized cameras that you swallow), and this is really a development from that idea further into the world of medicine. The pill can essentially do three things: it can monitor acidity levels, it can release medicine, and it can record temperatures.  All of which contribute towards its main aim of analyzing problems and acting upon them.
The iPill can measure acidity levels and use this to work out its location within the digestive system.  The iPill will then act upon the information to deliver a dose of the medicine in the correct area of the body.  The pill can also record temperatures which can be useful in diagnosing and monitoring problems.

As part of Philips’ commitment to provide integrated solutions for patient care, we are exploring the potential benefits of our technologies in the therapeutic arena,” says Henk van Houten, senior vice president of Philips Research and head of the Healthcare research program. “We foresee that technologies like the iPill, that combine electronics with diagnostic and therapeutic properties, will open up the possibility of targeting almost any kind of drug to a specific location in the intestinal tract.”

This is great news for increasing the effectiveness of medicine and hopefully we will be seeing this in action commercially soon in a whole variety of situations.  The downside?  These pills are probably too expensive to just flush down the toilet…

Source [Phillips]

Keep up with the latest gadget goodness! - Subscribe to our feed