Dr. Savage has an App for That
Ricochet's George Savage is too modest to post this, which is fine because I'd like to do the honors:
From the latest issue of Popular Science:
As a doctor, George Savage had the power to save lives, but part of his job still made him feel helpless: After patients left the hospital, he had no way of knowing if they were taking their medications. According to the World Health Organization, patients fail to use their prescriptions properly at least half the time.
It was a former grad-school housemate, Andrew Thompson, who brought Savage a solution. While perusing vendors at an American Heart Association meeting in 2004, Thompson noticed a glut of technology demonstrations on the device side, but a dearth on the drug side. “The only tech on display was a cappuccino machine,” he says. Inspired, the pair set to work with electrical engineer Mark Zdeblick to digitize medicine. Their Proteus Digital Health Feedback System, a blend of MEMS and wireless data transfer, could take the guesswork out of drug delivery for good.
It took the team seven years to create the centerpiece of the Feedback System, a pill that doubles as a radio. “The biggest question was, What types of materials would the FDA allow us to use?” Zdeblick says. “So we decided to use [ones from] a vitamin.” Small amounts of copper and magnesium conduct enough electricity (1.5 volts) to power a one-millimeter chip. When a pill containing the chip hits the stomach, the metals interact with stomach fluid to generate a current. The current transmits to a 2.5-inch patch on the patient’s torso, which relays the signal as binary code to his phone over Bluetooth. An app will determine the pill’s serial number, manufacturer, and ingredients, and saves that data to the cloud. Doctors will eventually be able to set up automatic alerts when adherence problems arise.
Wait a minute. Innovation? In health care?
Yes. There is. Or was. Innovation and entrepreneurial risk-taking are essential to every business, and even more so in the most important business of all: health. What's amazing about what George's company is doing is that it's so ... not amazing. It's the perfect kind of invention -- when you hear about it, you don't say, "Oh man! That blows my mind!" You say: "Of course!"
The questions are: 1) How much more innovation can we expect in the future, with government control and oversight of the entire medical industry? And 2) How can a generation of young people growing up in a world where technology is all about customization and setting personal preferences accept an Obamacare world, a world where one-size-fits-all, where the behemoth of the state is untouched by competition, technological disruption, or consumer empowerment?
Why do we demand excellent customer service from Amazon, but accept being pushed around by the federal government? Why do we set our preferences on our iPhone, but allow the government to set them for us in our retirement savings and our health care?
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Aug '10
Re: Dr. Savage has an App for That
I can't wait for this to hit the conspiracy theorists.
After all, if you can put this tech in a pill, what's to stop the Men In Black from putting it in our food? One millimetre-thick tracking devices that broadcast our location from our stomachs!
"You foiled us with your tinfoil hats, but we have adapted!"
Mar '11
Re: Dr. Savage has an App for That
I wish I were smart enough to understand all the brainiatrics that goes into something like this so I could properly appreciate it. I'm fairly confident the world needs more George Savages, though.
Sep '10
Re: Dr. Savage has an App for That
Andy Kessler's book _The End of Medicine_ is an interesting investigation of the same topics. Will testing become so convenient and ubiquitous that we are able to manage our own health better? I expect Obamacare to accelerate a process toward more of the rich who can affored it and something else for the masses...ironicly, but not unsurprsingly, those who demagoge about the rich wind up hurting the poor. It will become ever more like FedEx and the Post Office.
Re: Dr. Savage has an App for That
Amazing.
Mar '11
Re: Dr. Savage has an App for That
Maybe the future holds a black market for medical innovation, because there won't be much of an open market if statist trends continue apace.
Re: Dr. Savage has an App for That
I love that word: brainiatrics. Perfect!
Sep '10
Re: Dr. Savage has an App for That
Now if Mayor Bloomberg can figure out a way to get this technology into snack foods he will be able to monitor everyone's sugar intake.
Mar '11
Re: Dr. Savage has an App for That
Rob Long
I love that word: brainiatrics. Perfect! · 4 minutes ago
For the longest time I thought George Will just made up words too. Turns out the words he uses are real.
Edited on November 19, 2012 at 9:12pmMay '10
Re: Dr. Savage has an App for That
George just needs to get Senators Boxer and Feinstein to pass a law mandating the use of this device. Of course he needs to grant them some options in exchange for some invaluable "consulting" work first.jk Good stuff George!
Aug '10
Re: Dr. Savage has an App for That
Clearly, the federal government must mandate it's inclusion in every single sugar crystal sold in the United States.
Jun '12
Re: Dr. Savage has an App for That
Honestly, the first thought to come to my mind was "Great, a method for the government medical bureaucrats to track when, where and how I'm taking my medication". I'm not againt my doctor knowing when and if I take my meds. Now that my doctor is on his way to becoming another government drone, though, I don't want the information available. Because it will NOT remain between he and I.
Mar '11
Re: Dr. Savage has an App for That
Congratulations are in order for Dr. Savage!
But this brings up a question for me. There seems to be a pushback by both conservatives and many doctors against the attempts (dating from before Obamacare) by Democrats to mandate electronic health records.
If we actually had a (mostly) unregulated market in healthcare, isn't it likely that the market would impose an electronic record-keeping system in short order? And one that actually worked?
This is not argue that we should embrace the attempt to impose EHR from the top down. Rather, we should use companies like Proteus to demonstrate to left-leaning health wonks that their dreams of "modernizing" medical delivery will be met much better through less-regulated healthcare markets.
Mar '11
Re: Dr. Savage has an App for That
A cynical question for Dr. Savage: as long as so much of the cost of prescription drugs is picked up by third parties (especially Medicare), who stands to benefit from this device?
I can imagine there are influential lobbies who view your product very unfavorably.
Edited on November 19, 2012 at 9:21pmNov '10
Re: Dr. Savage has an App for That
Oh I love technology
Not as much as you, you see
But still I love technology
Aug '10
Re: Dr. Savage has an App for That
Misthiocracy: I can't wait for this to hit the conspiracy theorists.
After all, if you can put this tech in a pill, what's to stop the Men In Black from putting it in our food? One millimetre-thick tracking devices that broadcast our location from our stomachs!
"You foiled us with your tinfoil hats, but we have adapted!"
I bet you could sandwich a layer of tin foil into a homemade duct tape shirt.
Forget medicine, this technology has the potential to make millions for some entrepreneur catering to the paranoid crowd!
Aug '12
Re: Dr. Savage has an App for That
Speak for yourself. They turned a potato clock into a radio transmitter, stuck it in your stomach, and it will make your cell phone tell you when you need to redose.
Mind, BLOWN.
I'll get back to you on whether the potential privacy abuses concern me.
May '11
Re: Dr. Savage has an App for That
The power of a great new innovative idea rarely comes from the initial application. It achieves transformative power from the next generation of creativity that comes from free markets and free exchange of ideas. I am not an engineer but even I can imagine some powerful applications of this technology.
Jun '10
Re: Dr. Savage has an App for That
I understand the privacy issue, truly I do.
I, however, cheer, holler, and whoop at this. It would be a godsend for my mother who still lives alone but does not always remember to take her meds. I live three states away as does my brother. She does not want to move. I cannot even begin to think about the peace of mind such an innovation would provide us.
Thanks, Dr. Savage.
Aug '10
Re: Dr. Savage has an App for That
There isn't really a privacy issue. The range of the transmitter is from the inside of the stomach to the patient's torso.
Or maybe that's what they WANT us to believe...
Re: Dr. Savage has an App for That
I'm still reeling from the cognitive dissonance of finding my two lives--mild-mannered Silicon Valley medical technologist and charter member of the Ricochet wing of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy--collide above-the-fold on my favorite web-site.
Thanks for all of your comments.