Wearables? I’m Talking About Swallowables!

March 2, 2016

By Ernest Worthman

Worthman

March 3, 2016 — By now, I’m sure everyone has heard about wearables. If you think wearables are the greatest thing since Star Wars, wait until you hear about this – Move over wearables, here come swallowables (or internables). I about fell over when I heard this. Not that it isn’t a great idea, it just sounds laughable. Gotta hand it to the marketing peeps, once again.

There is no doubt that such devices are going to be one of the biggest, and most beneficial, segments of the wireless space going forward. They are relatively non-invasive, pill-like devices that one swallows — and it provides a myriad of biometric data for all types of situations, from a football player’s internal temperature to the amount of methane gas in one’s intestines. Another edge-of-the-envelope application for the world of modern wireless technology, and a new weapon in the medical arsenal.

Swallowing wireless devices isn’t all that new. We have had intestinal cameras for years now, and they have been a great aid to the medical diagnostic services (even if the inside of your colon ends up on the Internet).

But the latest advancements in miniaturization, power conservation and sensor technology have advanced internables by orders of magnitude — far beyond that of the swallowable camera.