A team of scientists in Switzerland has created a microchip monitor that is essentially a tiny blood lab embedded in a patient’s skin that would send continuous updates to a smartphone.

The device, still in the prototype stage, would eliminate the guesswork now inherent in such crucial medical decisions as chemotherapy or chronic-disease dosage.

“Each patient treats the drug in a different manner,” Dr. Sandro Carrara, one of the team leaders, told the Star from Lausanne on Thursday.

“It is a nightmare for any oncologist who tries to treat a patient. One molecule or a set of molecules will have different outcomes in different people.

“This tries to personalize the cure in real time for doctors.”

The microchip, half the size of a paperclip, can monitor five proteins and organic acids simultaneously. It sends the results, via an external battery patch, to a smartphone or computer, allowing a doctor to tailor the dose in real time to how the patient is responding.

“We are sure that this is a breakthrough, providing continuous monitoring for several applications,” said Carrara. “This is something like working on the future. It’s very exciting.”

How long it lasts depends on what it is monitoring, he said. A glucose sensor can last up to one year but a chemotherapy drug sensor may last only a day.

“Typically the chemotherapy drugs are spooled out by the metabolic system in 10 hours, so the continuous monitoring would be more than enough.”

The lab at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne is working on two other applications for continuous monitoring: drugs used in intensive-care units and drugs used in anesthesia.

In intensive-care units, “you have a few hours to save the life of a person. But you don’t know the vital parameters apart from a fever or a few others.”

For anesthetists, getting the dose right “is a very well known problem,” said Carrara. “This would provide immediate information on how a drug is being metabolized.”

The EPFL teamhas tested the device on animals and hopes it could be commercially available to doctors and their patients in four years.

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“I have already started a couple of good discussions with doctors, and the feedback is they have the will to use this. They do not have any information at the molecular level. They are ready to have new tools.”

Fellow team leader Dr. Giovanni de Micheli introduced the device Wednesday at the Design, Automation and Test Europe conference in Grenoble, France.