Intelligent iPill

Camera pills have been around for a while now. In fact, the first was approved by the US Federal Drug Administration (FDA) back in 2001.

But at next week’s American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists (AAPS) Annual Meeting and Exposition in Atlanta, scientists from Philips Research will be taking the wraps of a second generation device that sports even greater capabilities.

Like its predecessors, the new so-called iPill (pictured below) is also a capsule that has been designed to be swallowed and to pass through the digestive track. Unlike previous devices, however, it can be electronically programmed to deliver medicine at specific locations according to a pre-defined drug release profile.

The iPill determines its location in the intestinal tract by measuring the local acidity of its environment. Certain areas of the intestinal tract have distinct pH (a measure of acidity) profiles: the stomach is highly acidic and upon exiting the stomach the acidity of the gut sharply decreases and then becomes progressively less acidic from the upper intestine onwards.