In the latest episode of Impetus Digital‘s Fireside Chat, I sat down with Robert Niichel, Founder/CEO of SmartTab, and explored the concept of personalized wireless drug delivery, including its advantages, barriers, and current status. We also discussed the future of digital medicine, the Internet of Medical Things, AI, and much more!
Here is a sneak peek of our conversation:
Q: Do you ever see [SmartTab] manufacturing pills that are specific to a patient’s genetic or chemical make-up?
A: We’re actually working on that in some cases to where you have one pill and then when it deploys the active ingredient, based upon the microprocessor, it would only deploy so much from the pill. One of the chambers will only inject say halfway and then you have a specific dose. We didn’t get into artificial intelligence too much yet, but imagine the implications if you had a 30-day supply of a capsule and you take your capsules for the first three days, and you have a system, maybe another capsule, maybe a patch, maybe even a smart tablet, that’s monitoring how that drug affects [the patient].
Let’s say something like insulin. You’re injecting it and your sugar is moving up and down but you’re monitoring that and then that sends those data back to some type of an artificial intelligence database. They run their algorithms, then it comes back and it says, “For the next three days, let’s just give you half the dose.” What you have now, all of a sudden, is a real-time deployment system and that’s where the future gets really exciting, because we can deploy the system and potentially monitor it. Again, it could be the sugar, it could be blood pressure, it could be heart rate, it could be a lot of things. Then, you send that and you have hundreds of other people that are feeding data into the artificial intelligence.
They’re running the algorithms, it goes back to maybe the doctor’s PC or even to the person, then it moves the dose up and down depending on what the AI system tells you to do. Now, you have this very personalized medicine because you can now control the dose on an ongoing basis and that could change over time. Maybe on week two for some reason, your sugar spikes so you give more insulin, or maybe on week three, for some reason it’s lower, then you back off. You get into this real-time loop where artificial intelligence plays a big role. Not only do you have a personalized dose but you can change it in real-time…
For more of our discussion, you can watch the whole Fireside Chat with Robert Niichel, or listen to the podcast version, below.
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Impetus Digital is the spark behind sustained healthcare stakeholder communication, collaboration, education, and insight synthesis. Our best-in-class technology and professional services ensure that life science organizations around the world can easily and cost-effectively grow and prosper—from brand or idea discovery to development, commercialization, execution, and beyond—in collaboration with colleagues, customers, healthcare providers, payers, and patients.