Text Messages from a Microchip on Your Shoulder Remind You to Take Your Pills
Chip-on-a-shoulder sends nagging text messages to patients who fail to follow doctors' orders A text-messaging microchip planted on the patient's body significantly boosts compliance with doctor's prescriptions, according to pharmaceutical giant Novartis. That's good news for patient health and reining in healthcare costs, but a potentially worrisome development for privacy advocates. Patients taking a drug for lowering blood pressure also received two additional gifts: tiny microchips within each pill and a shoulder-attached sensor patch. Mobihealthnews explained how stomach acid surrounding the ingested pills generates an electric charge, and that signals the shoulder patch. The patch dutifully records the time and date when a patient takes each pill, so that it can give its wearer a cell phone buzz when it's time to take the next pill. Other information, such as heart rate, activity and breathing patterns, are also transmitted to the cell phone...