What is an electronic pill feedback system?

Monitoring your health has never been easier than with an electronic pill feedback system. It seems incredibly futuristic, but is actually quite simple when you understand how it works. Ingestible sensors are the latest developments in medical technology. These sensors allow doctors to monitor minute responses to medicine and based on your body’s reaction adjust dosages if necessary. Your stomach fluids power the electronic pill feedback system, which then transmits a signal to a patch you wear on your body. That signal is sent to a device, be it a cell phone, tablet, or computer. Your doctor is able to ensure that you’ve taken the medication and can assess how your body reacts, based on physiological changes such as heart rate.

The digital pill is part of the growing field of nanotechnology and has developed from applicable uses in biological science. The chip that gets implanted into the pill (which is what sends the signal) is made of silicon and safe to be ingested. Because you will be taking this pill every day, it’s important that it be made of safe materials. Companies are in the process of developing these pills for different fields of medicine, touting the benefits that come with being able to monitor and adjust medicine based on the body’s exact reaction. An electronic pill feedback system takes the guesswork, for lack of a better term, out of the trial-and-error of dosages and the how and when to change medication.

What’s the point of being able to monitor response to medicine?

The aim of monitoring pill intake in this form is to give patients a better quality of life. It’s not necessarily a pill reminder system, but it allows doctors to a track patient’s habits and chart the times when they are forgetting their doses. If the pills are being taken twice a day, for example, but a patient tends to forget to take it at night, perhaps a stronger single dose would work better. The doctor is able to monitor and adjust medicine based on the facts of the situation. It also ensures a patient is finishing a prescription on time. Cycles of medication are designed for an optimal result and if the patient is skipping doses and extending the drug cycle, the effects of the medication won’t be as noticeable or consistent.

Of course, a digital pill as a form of electronic pill feedback system is only the beginning. Scientists are working on pills to detect heart disease and using chips to detect cancer based on your saliva. Being able to detect these diseases, treat them, and monitor response to medicine on a patient-by-patient basis will create a customized care plan that gives the patient back a much higher quality of life.