Tattle tale pill : An Ultimate Discovery

Friends, no need to worry now, if you have  near and dear ones who are ill and who forget to take their medicines....the solution is here....

The subsisting Hitch:

It is interesting to find out 10% of patients fail to take the medicine as prescribed and the patients prescribed on more than five medications fail to take the accurate doses resulting in 218,000 deaths annually  when the patient doesn't take/ skip their medication.

How to tackle the problem:

How to confirm that patient has swallowed the medicine? Is there any ray of tool to confirm???

And the answer is Yes!!!

Yes!!! now a patient can't escape from taking the medicine.

But how???

Adventing technologies has grabbed the attention of scientists by developing a magic pill simply called " The Tattletale pill".

What is this Tattletale Pill and how does it work???

This innovative pill comprises of ---

a white capsule with a silvery line coatings which consist of ink printed non-toxic, conductive silver nanoparticles made antenna and a microchip.

Here's how it works:  

1. The patient swallows a pill that contains both medicine and an ultra-tiny sensor chip.
2. This sensor is made of food and vitamin materials, in very small, safe quantities. These materials get activated by the patient's stomach acid, essentially making the human body a battery.
   
   
3. Then, the chip sends a signal to a waterproof skin patch, akin to a bandage that the person wears. 
4. The patch picks up data about heart rate, body angle, temperature, sleep, and other parameters. If the patient comes within 20 feet of his or her phone, the encrypted data are sent to the company, which processes it and sends it back in a readable form to a cell phone or e-mail account.

What about safety ?

I know the question in your mind ...Swallowing "micro-chips" ...hmmm ....coming to that...

According to the company , the main advantage and beauty of this technology lies in the non-use of battery as our stomach acids itself acts as the battery and microchip contents are broken down. Even the Antenna used for signaling is biodegradable that dissolves and degrades within our body.

Clinical Potentials of Tattletale pill:

This pill was tested in Cadavers and artificial human models and the research findings states that remnants that antenna left behind were no more toxic as it contains negligible amounts of silver less than that consumed by the patient through tap water.

Current status:

The UF Spinoff company is developing the future generation pill for FDA testing as well for commercial exploitation and was been applied for patenting. 

Even Novartis AG in collaboration with Proteus are trying to develop the wireless device which is anticipated to come into the markets by the year 2011-12.

So, let us hope this novel technology revolutionizes the markets with 100% patient compliance and stands as a prudent technique tackling the problem.

Reference:
 1) http://www.physorg.com/news189255589.html
 2)  Cable News Network. Tattletale pills, bottles remind you to take your meds; c 2010   [updated 2010 Feb 2; uncited].
CNN Turner Broadcasting System, Inc; [about 1 screen]. Available from: http://edition.cnn.com/  (Accessed on 10 Apr'2010).

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