First, health care entrepreneurs raced to claim the market to put an EKG on consumer’s wrists. Then came miniaturized glucose monitors and tracking devices inside chemotherapy pills. Now, the rush is on to tackle the most personally intrusive, and impactful, task of all: Embedding sensors all along your digestive tract.
Around the world, researchers are developing ingestible sensors designed to help detect and treat everything from colon cancer, to minor indigestion, to Crohn’s disease, while potentially unlocking some of the biggest mysteries buried in the human gut.
A research team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has already created an ingestible sensor capable of tracking the rhythmic movements of the digestive tract and identifying bleeding in pigs.
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