At first you may say this is old stuff, but the new version does much more than just take pictures on it’s way through your system, this one disperses medication, and that’s the whole idea is to have a pill put the medicine on target, where it needs to be with digestive problems such as treating Crohn’s Disease.
It has a microprocessor that is the brain of the unit. When delivering direct to the site, it may result in lower doses of medication as well. The pill also has a battery, pH sensor, temperature sensor, RF wireless transceiver, fluid pump and drug reservoir. I would say this is just more than the average smart pill. It transmits to a wireless device outside the body so communicating and knowing the where abouts of the pill is possible.
I would not look for this gutless wonder to be generic any time soon for obvious reasons, and it is still pending approval at this point. BD
In 2001, the first camera pill was approved by the Federal Drug Administration (FDA) for diagnostic applications. Now seven years later, for the first time, researchers from Philips will present their iPill technology – the next generation to the camera pill. The iPill is a capsule, the same size as a camera pill, and has been designed to be swallowed and to pass through the digestive track naturally. It can be electronically programmed to control the delivery of medicine according to a pre-defined drug release profile.
The iPill determines its location in the intestinal tract by measuring the local acidity of its environment. Distinct areas of the intestinal tract have distinct pH (a measure of acidity) profiles: the stomach is highly acidic and upon exiting the stomach the acidity of the gut sharply decreases and then becomes progressively less acidic from the upper intestine onwards. Armed with this pH information and data about capsule transit times, the location in the gut can be determined with good accuracy. The iPill releases medicine from its drug reservoir via a microprocessor controlled pump, allowing accurate programmable drug delivery. In addition, the capsule is designed to measure local temperature, and report measurements wirelessly to an external receiver unit.
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