Ingestible Electronic Sensor Capsules Start Live-Data Trend:
So all jokes aside for now, everyone who visits HT knows we’re right at the edge of a new age in health.
Whether it’s Apple Watches saving people’s lives or simple little apps,
Our future is changing because of small powerful computers and big data.
Nowhere is that going to be more evident than personal health monitoring that goes on live, right as you go through your day.
And though heart-monitors are great for exercise, nothing beats the firepower of your GI-tract…
The Most Accurate Picture Is Now:
Who knows why science is “going there” again with its second internal diagnostic pill, but it is.
The first one was a camera, but the new one has sensors-only and no video.
And like the first one, the new pill by the RMIT team is an early effort at on-site real-time data.
Now it may not be as sophisticated as James Bond’s nano-blood that’s supposed to make him trackable anywhere around the globe,
But the researchers trying to help doctors fix your problems contend this sensor may be the only real way to get a true picture of someone’s digestive-health.
A Health Snapshot That You Swallow:
-Either that, or it’s a very elaborate way to give writers and scientists the opportunity for some very juvenile humor.
So: Win-Win, then?
The RMIT Ingestable Sensor is just about exactly what you’d think it is:
A large “pill” with a computer, a radio, an antenna, batteries, and 3 gas sensors.
These all check for digestive health targets of Oxygen, Hydrogen, and Carbon-Dioxide.
But all of that could get upgraded in the future.
A Pain In The Gas Is Only The Beginning:
Right now it just tests for imbalances that can give some sufferers painful gas,
And based on that, it can help doctors come up with a precise recommendation for what to do about it.
Using different types of biological principles and scientific data, they can also tell what part of your body the sensor is even in,
And also get an idea if that part of you is working well.
Even now, early tests have found people on high-fiber diets have completely different conditions present in them than ever thought possible.
Immediate Proof That Nutrition Makes A Big Difference:
They’ve also discovered a part of the immune-system in the stomach that tries to kill anything foreign or indigestable with chemicals previously unknown to biologists.
But the real story of this pill is not in its present-day South-Park-esque gas-sniffing expertise,
-Despite the fact that GI health is a serious issue for some people with big problems.
The most-important application of this technology is what it could do in the future.
Ingestible Electronic Capsules, A Health-Monitor Idea That Isn’t Just Hot Air:
As long as you have a smartphone in your pocket, and enough algorithms to throw at the data,
The gas-sensor-pill could be combined with the camera-pill and other sensors,
Or you could just take many different pills if all of them won’t fit into one.
And for anything that goes on inside you, the sky’s the limit.
-Including crazy things like custom weight-loss solutions with bespoke dna-specific probiotics.
Every Intestinal Problem Solved, Precision Probiotics:
It may one day even be able to aid in early prevention of everything from IBS, to Candida, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, on out to much more serious things like colo-rectal anomalies.
And since we’re learning more and more about the crucial importance of our gut-health’s impact on everything else,
Especially the microbes in it,
Newer versions of this pill might be crucial in preventing many different types of disease.
Your Gut Affects Your Entire Health, Including Your Heart:
Because even now, we’re learning that gut health problems may be implicated in everything from cardiovascular disease to Alzheimer’s.
It definitely sounds a little “out-there”, but the reports keep coming in!
So for now, make as many juvenile jokes as you want about TSA metal detectors and a replacement for fingerprint-scans in high-security building access,
Or the potential to make your own hydrogen-oxygen rocket fuel using the exactly right probiotics just in time for the sequel to “Blazing Saddles”,
But,
First Smart Stickers, Now Ingestable Sensors:
Between Smart Stickers and this, the future of hyper-accurate diagnosis & treatment for just about anything will be some type of live-body sensor,
-That you will probably have to swallow,
And then eventually get rid of.
… I wonder if there is a small deposit rebate if you return your ingestible electronic capsule to RMIT after the diagnostic is over?
Photo Credits: “OKIMG_8170”, by Flickr user taymtaym
Links:
• Source: RMIT
• via: NPR
• More Coverage: YT – South Park “Smug Alert!” | YT – “Blazing Saddles”
• Source Study: Nature,Electronics – A human pilot trial of ingestible electronic capsules capable of sensing different gases in the gut
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