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Bianca Bartz
Drug-Delivering Implants
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MIT & MicroChips Testing MEMS For Meds[Edit]
The day when taking your meds is as simple as inserting a chip under your skin is getting closer. MIT, along with MicroChips, is testing a medical implant using microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) to deliver even dosage of medications. Animal testing is set to begin in January to see if they can heal osteoporosis-derived bone damage, and in a year and a half, MIT wants to start testing implants on diabetic humans to regulate blood sugar. “The first product, a device for delivering an anti-osteoporosis drug automatically, could allow patients to replace 500 daily injections with a single outpatient implant procedure,” according to Technology Review. “The glucose sensor, by continuously monitoring glucose levels, could reveal spikes in blood-sugar levels that go undetected using conventional sensors. Such spikes, if not treated, can contribute to organ damage, including blindness.” Those are only two potential applications, MIT anticipates the use of MEMs to deliver multiple drugs at once, detect early signs of heart attacks and strokes.  The company discovered that its technology could provide an answer to a "vexing problem" that had stymied researchers at Medtronic, a multibillion-dollar implant manufacturer, for years, says Stephen Oesterle, Medtronic's senior vice president for technology and a MicroChips board member. A sensor that monitored glucose continuously hadn't been possible, he says, because sensors degrade over time, lasting for at most a month. With the MEMS technology, however, it became possible to implant an array of sensors, activating just one at a time. The sensor is read by onboard electronics, with the data transmitted via radio to an external monitor.
(technologyreview)Via: technologyreview |
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