Wednesday, October 28, 2015

Pill Of The Future?

         Pills in the past have come a long way with the dosage and sizes, but according to Sarah Aspler at Marsdd.com pills have made another leap in its dosage. You can now swallow mini cameras that take snapshots of someone’s internal organs and/or ingest ingestible sensors that monitor the insides of the body and are activated by electrolytes within the body. The pill gathers data then sends a signal to a “smart patch” worn along the patients’ torso, which will then send an alert to the smart phones of the persons’ family members or doctor, warning them that something is not right within the users body. These pills will be able to detect infection, low blood pressure, and other issues that sometimes go undetected. Designed to recognize issues earlier than the eye of a doctor, these pills will start to eliminate often times unnecessary physical checkups made by doctors.
         Although this may make the jobs of the doctors easier, will they be happy with their pay cuts that are bound to happen due to the fact the people wont feel the need for them that much anymore? Which will ultimately lead to a war between doctors and smart pill, in which the pill needs the doctor but the doctors don’t need the pills which can further more lead to the failure of the pill.
         The pill will also be ingested, and things that are ingested are digested and certainly soon exits the body. Which means the patient will have to take these pills on top of the prescription pills that they already take on the daily basis or every couple of days. This can become annoying to the patient as well as costly to the family.  Sensors and cameras aren’t cheap already as it is and to make them into pill size or even to just attach them to pills and to be disposable can be expensive.

          Another issue with these smart pills is that the alerts that they send out to phones. Will these messages/ pictures be sent through email or text? Will the people who receive the data need to be in a certain range? Will the patients have to be connected to Wi-Fi or Bluetooth? These are all questions that can vary on ones opinion about the pill and also could lead to them staying away from getting involved with this ”Smart Pill” and also leading to the failure of this revolutionizing idea.

3 comments:

  1. I think this smart pill is a really interesting idea, but I don't think that it is going to be something people are taking everyday. I could imagine people taking one of these pills when they are already feeling sick, and use it as a way to self-diagnose what is wrong. It could also be very beneficial for someone to take right after a surgery, to quickly notice an infection before it can do substantial damage. I like this idea, however I am really wondering if it would be a prescription. I could see this technology being marketed almost like a FitBit, but also I can see access to these pills by doctors orders only. I'm not sure which path this pill will ultimately take, but hopefully it reaches consumers soon.

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  2. While the smart pill seems like a great idea, I do believe it could lead to self-diagnosis amongst its users, which could potentially put the consumer in danger if they try to treat themselves. The idea of ingesting a camera also concerns me; will this camera harm my body? Could it get stuck in an organ somewhere and cause an even bigger issue or infection? I am also concerned with the information the pills send to smartphones. Since all information can be hacked, I am concerned that hackers could hack into a person's phone or computer and access their private health information. This could even be done by insurance companies trying to raise rates on its customers. While I do believe the smart pill could be successful in the future, I do believe some questions need to be answered before I could accept it as beneficial.

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  3. I personally think that the smart pill has the potential to be a groundbreaking advancement in medicine. Im thinking that it could potentially play a role in cancer research. The pills ability to gather data and detect infection could save many peoples lives. In many cases, cancer can go undetected before it is too late. This pill could give save a cancer patients life, and for that matter any other life threatening diseases. I would however like to learn more about how your body would react with the pill in your system. Will it naturally digest and come out or will it stay in your system until physically removed by a doctor.

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