Medicine is truly going hi-tech.  I don’t mean large machines used for diagnosis and therapy, I mean the pills.  Now medication capsules are being designed by electronics companies.  Actually, the same company that makes LCD TVs and DVDs will now be making pills.  Scary.

Phillips has created a pill capsule that allows medication to be released at specific points in the intestines.  The Telegraph.co.uk reports that “contains a microprocessor, battery, wireless radio, pump and a drug reservoir to release medication in a specific area in the body.”

Phillips is calling this “intelligent pill technology”.  This mechanized pill will be able to detect where it is in the intestinal tract.  A built in microprocessor within the iPill is capable of performing a variety of calculations and follow programmed instructions.

The iPill is able to detect the ph level as it passes through the gut and with the built in processor can tell by the ph level and the amount of time that has passed since it was swallowed, where it is internally.

Once the iPill has reached the a predetermined location, by analyzing ph level, a pre-programmed amount of medication can be administered.  Phillips hopes that this precision placement of medication will help in such illnesses like colon cancer, Crohn’s disease, and colitis.

This is the second medical “pill” that Phillips has created for medical use.  The first pill was a “camera pill” that was developed in 2001.  That pill is able to provide photo footage of the intestinal tract for diagnosis of a variety of different illnesses.

The iPill takes Phillips medical technology one step further.  Of course, as with all new medical technology, there is no discussion of how much these little mechanized pills will cost an actual patient as well as whether a drug company will ever approve its use.

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Entry was posted on Wednesday, November 12th, 2008 at 10:00 pm under Health, Science and technology, Technology.

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