The days of having to wear electrodes, clips and gadgets to monitor your health while in hospital or your fitness when going about your daily business may be over. Your next tracker could be ingestible.
Researchers from Massachusetts Institute of Technology have developed an sensor that monitors a patient’s heart rate and breathing from the inside.
The small, almond-sized plastic pill records and transmits sounds from within the gut, wirelessly relaying the information to a nearby computer. Processing the recordings allows the researchers to detect the sounds of the pulse and respiratory rate.
“Through characterisation of the acoustic wave, recorded from different parts of the GI tract, we found that we could measure both heart rate and respiratory rate with good accuracy,” said gastroenterologist and co-lead author of the study published in PLoS One Giovanni Traverso.
The small, microphone-containing pills take between one and two days to travel the gut, at which point another pill must be swallowed to continue monitoring vital signs.
The researchers tested the pills using six sedated pigs, with the results comparing favourably to those gathered by standard veterinary monitoring equipment.
The next stage is to develop a human-friendly version for further testing. The researchers intend to use the system as a basis for further molecular monitoring, something companies including Google have been working on. They also plan to develop a system for use outside of hospital environments, for monitoring athletes, military personnel and others.
Traverso said: “We hope that one day we’re able to detect certain molecules or a pathogen and then deliver an antibiotic, for example. This development provides the foundation for that kind of system down the line.”
