Rizwan Bashirullah holding a prototype pill. Image: Ray Carson/University of Florida
GAINESVILLE, Fla. -- Rizwan Bashirullah, a University of Florida assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering, holds a pill capsule designed to signal when a patient has swallowed it in this photo taken March 19, 2010. The pill is needed because many patients fail to take their medication, exacerbating medical problems, causing unneeded hospitalizations and leading to an estimated 217,000 deaths annually. Consisting of an antenna made with nontoxic silver nanoparticles and a tiny microchip about the size of a period, the pill works by communicating from inside the body with a stand-alone device worn by the patient.
Ray Carson/University of Florida
Imagine a pill that could tell your doctor whether you’ve actually taken it, or tell researchers conducted a clinical trial whether you’re using the medication as instructed. Rizwan Bashirullah, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Florida, is working to develop exactly that. By applying miniscule microchips to pill capsules, he hopes to develop a technology that could electronically transmit information about when a pill has been consumed—not based on human reports, but based on chemical detection that the medicine is in fact inside a human stomach.
