Can you just hang up and it will go away?
World's smallest blood monitoring implant tells your smartphone when you're about to have a heart attack
ExtremeTech.com -
A team of scientists at Ecole
Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland have developed
the world’s smallest medical implant to monitor critical chemicals in
the blood. The 14mm device measures up to five indicators, including
proteins like troponin, that show if and when a heart attack has
occurred. Using Bluetooth, the device can then transmit the data to a
smartphone for tracking. The device can also track levels of glucose,
lactate, and ATP, providing valuable data for physiologic monitoring
during activity, or in possible disease conditions like diabetes. As far
as tricorders go, this device may be the one you have been waiting for,
provided you are on board for the implant.
Outside the body, a
battery patch provides the 100 milliwatts of power that the device
requires by wireless inductive charging through the skin.(See:
How wireless charging works.) Each
sensor is coated with an enzyme that reacts with blood-borne chemicals
to generate a detectable signal. For patient monitoring, a device like
this would quickly become indispensable once introduced. In cancer
treatment for example, exact dosing is critical. Numerous blood tests
are often required to calibrate the treatment according the to the
patient’s particular ability to break down and excrete the drug. Often
these parameters change when the disease, or the therapy, directly
affects the organs involved in these processes — typically this would
mean the liver and the kidneys.
Often
in the hours before a heart attack, fatigued or oxygen-starved muscle
begins to break down, and fragments of a heart-specific smooth muscle
protein, the troponin mentioned above, are dumped into the blood. If
this can be detected before disruption of the heart rhythm, or the
actual attack, lifesaving preemptive treatment can be initiated sooner.
To be fail-safe, this depends on the patient having access to their
data. Dependence on the integrity of multiple weak links to the cloud,
to the doctor, and back again — as is often the prescribed future care
scenario — are unacceptable, particularly when heart attacks might be
counted on to occur precisely at those times when those links may not be
there. Assuming the battles for patient rights will be won sooner
rather than later, the next important choice would be getting the proper
ringtone when that fateful troponin call comes. A standard ringtone
with universal appeal would let bystanders know what was going on and
assistance could, at least in theory, be had.
The rest of the story:
