Microchips in medicine
Дипломная работа - Медицина, физкультура, здравоохранение
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Moscow Medicine Academy
Essay: Microchips in medicine
year student group 1of military trainingAnn: Karagezyan M. V.
Moscow, 2010
Contents
Introdactionin medicinethe doctors prescriptionsin Blood Pressure Pills Nags Patients Who Skip Meds
Microchip implants linked to cancer in animalImplants, Mind Control, and Cyberneticsabout VeriChip
Testing the microchip(VeriChip) implantsmicrochip technology in medicine
Introduction
long, sensors may be implanted in our bodies to do things like measure blood-glucose levels in diabetics or retinal pressure in glaucoma patients. But to be practical, they'll have to both be very small--as tiny as a grain of sand--and use long-lasting batteries of similarly small size, a combination not commercially available today. researchers at the University of Michigan have made a processor that takes up just one millimeter square and whose power consumption is so low that emerging thin-film batteries of the same size could power it for 10 years or more, says David Blaauw, a professor of electrical engineering and computer science at Michigan and lead researcher on the project.when this processor, dubbed the Phoenix, is coupled with a battery, the whole package would only be a cubic millimeter in volume. At this scale, Blaauw says, it could be feasible to build the chip into a thick contact lens and use it to monitor pressure in the eye, which would be useful for glaucoma detection. It could also be implanted under the skin to sense glucose levels in subcutaneous fluid. More broadly, this low-power approach to processor design could be used in environmental sensors that monitor pollution, or structural health sensors, for instance.
Microchips in medicine
much heralded 'microchip revolution' has made an impact in many fields - industrial automation, supermarket stock control and business accounting, to name but a few - and television games can occupy the new-found leisure of the community. However, the transition from manual operation to partial or full automation is not necessarily easy and may require a different approach on the part of the user. It is perhaps not surprising that the microchip has had very little impact on the practice of medicine as a whole at the present time.one end of the scale, special purpose processors are built into a wide variety of equipment such as blood gas analysers, devices for testing respiratory function or patient monitors. The user is often unaware that the machine is microprocessor based, but this may be advantageous in terms of increased reliability and versatility with reduced cost. In theory, improvements in system software may be readily incorporated, although in practice changes may not be passed on to the user and bugs in the system may be troublesome. Maintenance is also likely to be easier for the manufacturer, but faults may be difficult for the user to eradicate unless details of test and troubleshooting procedures are available. Computer-based body canners lie at the other end of the spectrum, where powerful computing facilities are required to control the system and process the signals from X-ray or other detectors.devices rely on high-speed dedicated computers for their operation, and the low cost and ready availability of suitable microprocessors have helped to make these machines a commercial reality. This development has had an enormous impact on clinical practice. In addition, there are many computer applications, using general purpose or dedicated machines, which have only an indirect effect on patient care. Data processing and retrieval systems, which may vary in size from simple pocket calculators to large computer installations, are well established particularly for financial transactions and may also be used for stock control, clinical chemistry and other well defined purposes. However, the fully developed computer-based hospital information system, although heralded for more than a decade, remains unimplemented. This is largely due to the inflexibility of many computer systems and the difficulties of providing the system with accurate and up-to-date information. Less amibitious schemes have been developed for teaching, patient interrogation and other purposes. These are often used very successfully in the centres where they were developed, but may languish when transferred to other institutions.
This is not necessarily surprising in view of the individualistic nature of medical practice,idiosyncrasies of systems designers or programmers and lack of compatibility between equipment from different manufacturers. Thus the benefits of microprocessor-based systems, whether for information retrieval or process control, are best seen in service (such as radiology and pathology) and administrative departments of the hospital, and computers have made little or no direct impact on clinical practice., it must not be forgotten that successive generations of medical students are becoming increasingly exposed to computing techniques. It is the attitude of tomorrow's consultants and of the patients under their care, as much as the development of new technology, which will determine the place of computing in the day-today care of patients in the futurethe doctors prescriptions
company is testing technology that inserts a tiny microchip into each pill swallowed and sends a reminder to patients by text message if they fail to follow their doctors prescriptions.partnership with Proteus Biomedical, which originally developed the technology, is one of several alliances under development by Novartis as it and rival pharmaceuticals companies attempt to maintain high prices for innovative medicines by ensuring that they are taken as the doctor ordered. Pfizers Health Solutions division has developed a system to telephone patients to encourage them to take medicine.Jimenez, head of pharmaceuticals at Novartis, said tests using the system - which broadcasts from the chip in the pill to a receiver on the shoulder - on 20 patients using Diovan, a drug to lower blood pressure, had boosted compliance with prescriptions from 30 per cent to 80 per cent after six months.experiment comes amid rising concern among governments and health insurers that they are not seeing the health improvements claimed by drugs companies because patients do not take the medicines as prescribed unless they are closely supervised in clinical trials.often drops off rapidly for patients, especially those taking medicines for chronic conditions such as hypertension and diabetes. This is because of unpleasant side effects or because patients do not rapidly develop symptoms and so fail to notice the value of the drug. However, with patients then going on to develop more serious forms of illness and require hospitalisation or surgery, the result is hundreds of millions of dollars a year in unnecessary costs.
in Blood Pressure Pills Nags Patients Who Skip Meds
, new technology is both creepy and common sense. Take, for example, a system Novartis is testing for reminding patients to take their blood pressure meds.company is testing inserting tiny microchips into the pills as part of a system that tracks whether patients are taking their meds as prescribed. When patients veer off course, they get a text message reminder.technology has significantly improved adherence in a very small group of patients taking the companys blood pressure medicine Diovan, a Novartis exec tells the Financial Times.patients to consistently take drugs for chronic conditions like high blood pressure can be a problem. The drugs sometimes cause side effects, and failing to take them can raise long-term risks for strokes and heart attacks without causing any immediate symptoms.is partnering on the project with a small company called Proteus Biomedical, one of several companies mentioned in this August WSJ story that looked at the push to use wireless technology to try and keep people healthier - an effort that has also drawn big players like Qualcomm and Intel, the piece noted.
This industry is starting to explode, said Mr Jimenez, adding that he was close to recruiting a compliance tsar to oversee a wide range of other partnerships and programmes to strengthen appropriate use of medicines.Jimenez stressed that Novartis would still need to work closely with regulators and doctors to overcome any concerns, and negotiate an exclusive contract with Proteus in order to expand the approach. But he was confident that such approaches to boost compliance would be widespread in the future.
implants linked to cancer in animal
the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved implanting microchips in humans, the manufacturer said it would save lives, letting doctors scan the tiny transponders to access patients' medical records almost instantly. The FDA found "reasonable assurance" the device was safe, and a sub-agency even called it one of 2005's top "innovative technologies."neither the company nor the regulators publicly mentioned this: A series of veterinary and toxicology studies, dating to the mid-1990s, stated that chip implants had "induced" malignant tumors in some lab mice and rats.
"The transponders were the cause of the tumors," said Keith Johnson, a retired toxicologic pathologist, explaining the findings of a 1996 study he led.cancer specialists reviewed the research for The Associated Press and, while cautioning t