Medical devices which dissolve harmlessly when no longer needed

Published on September 28, 2012 By DrJBHL In Personal Computing

We know about the devices we don’t want to ‘disappear’… pacemakers, shunts, heart valves, insulin pumps and the like.

Well, there will be monitoring devices (not far off at all) which will be implanted at surgery, or via scopes which will monitor temperature, sugar… (and more being developed) which can be ‘programmed’ to last a week, two weeks or longer… and then just dissolve harmlessly.

They’re made of inexpensive, non-toxic materials (silicon in non-toxic amounts and silk protein) which will harmlessly dissolve after that pre-programmed time.

These sensors can be powered wirelessly. The inventors say that they can create non-rechargeable batteries as well (but haven’t published about this yet).

So what have they got so far? A thermometer and a tiny camera.

Now all we need is a way to make the bills dissolve just as easily.

Comments

Wizard1956

on Sep 28, 2012

Cool stuff there, Doc. On PBS the other day, I watched a segment where a young lady swallowed a very tiny capsule containing a micro video camera. It takes real-time video from start to finish from the teeth all the way to...uh.... er.....

some hospital tech in charge of retrieving the camera.

DrJBHL

on Sep 28, 2012

That was invented the same place this was:

You can read about it here: http://israel21c.org/technology/israel-presents-the-worlds-smallest-medical-camera-2/

Daiwa

on Sep 29, 2012

It is already within our technical capability to implant biosensors which communicate by WiFi - it won't be long till a sensor can warn of an impending MI long before any symptoms occur. And there'll be an app for that, alerting you on your smart phone.

Jafo

on Sep 29, 2012

Daiwa

reply 3

it won't be long till a sensor can warn of an impending MI

....and we can ALL then avoid Tom Cruise in yet another BS movie...

DrJBHL

on Sep 29, 2012

Hahaha! If only.

BoXXi

on Sep 29, 2012

Jafo

reply 4

Quoting Daiwa, reply 3 it won't be long till a sensor can warn of an impending MI

....and we can ALL then avoid Tom Cruise in yet another BS movie...

hahaha.... Brilliant!

Daiwa

on Sep 29, 2012

Jafo

reply 4

and we can ALL then avoid Tom Cruise in yet another BS movie

There's that, too.

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