How important is knowing the health of yourself and your loved ones? Even if your family is happy and healthy, it matters that people around the world are receiving the care that they need. Especially those who live in poverty and need help. However, people from all around the world every day die to diseases they didn't know they had or can't afford help for. It is a major problem and needs to be fixed. Although health care isn't free. How could we resolve this problem for people with little to no money at all?
Well we may be taking major steps into resolving some of this problem as Guillermo Tearney and his crew at Boston General Hospital are working on a gut probe pill. This pill takes the place of an endoscope while searching for diseases in the stomach area. Before, the patient must be knocked out on anesthesia and have a giant tube inserted down their throat and into their stomach. It is long, invasive, and yes, expensive. However with this new innovation, the patient simply swallows a pill and it is guided down into their stomach with cameras that give pictures of their stomach to doctors. It is safer, quicker, less invasive, and much cheaper.
What could possibly make this innovation better? The main reason it is being invented is to environmental enteric dysfunction (EED), a disease found in children living in impoverished countries. This means people who are getting screened for this in poor countries should not have to pay for the service. However, is the pill limited to screening for EED? Absolutely not! This pill can be used worldwide to search for various abdominal issues that the endoscope would originally screen for. This innovation can change the world by giving people cheaper and more practical screening, but it doesn't end there. More diseases and problems exist in the world. I think that this innovation will open up the door for new inventors to create more medical advances. Eventually we can change the world with improvements in medical technology.
Well we may be taking major steps into resolving some of this problem as Guillermo Tearney and his crew at Boston General Hospital are working on a gut probe pill. This pill takes the place of an endoscope while searching for diseases in the stomach area. Before, the patient must be knocked out on anesthesia and have a giant tube inserted down their throat and into their stomach. It is long, invasive, and yes, expensive. However with this new innovation, the patient simply swallows a pill and it is guided down into their stomach with cameras that give pictures of their stomach to doctors. It is safer, quicker, less invasive, and much cheaper.
What could possibly make this innovation better? The main reason it is being invented is to environmental enteric dysfunction (EED), a disease found in children living in impoverished countries. This means people who are getting screened for this in poor countries should not have to pay for the service. However, is the pill limited to screening for EED? Absolutely not! This pill can be used worldwide to search for various abdominal issues that the endoscope would originally screen for. This innovation can change the world by giving people cheaper and more practical screening, but it doesn't end there. More diseases and problems exist in the world. I think that this innovation will open up the door for new inventors to create more medical advances. Eventually we can change the world with improvements in medical technology.
Nature News, Nature Publishing Group, blogs.nature.com/spoonful/2013/01/an-ingestible-pill-sized-device-offers-a-3d-view-of-the-esophagus.html.
Gora, Michalina J, et al. “Tethered Capsule Endomicroscopy Enables Less Invasive Imaging of Gastrointestinal Tract Microstructure.” Nature Medicine, U.S. National Library of Medicine, Feb. 2013, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3567218/.
Person. “10 Breakthrough Technologies 2019, Curated by Bill Gates.” MIT Technology Review, MIT Technology Review, 28 Feb. 2019, www.technologyreview.com/lists/technologies/2019/.
You stated, "It is safer, quicker, less invasive, and much cheaper." How much cheaper is this product in comparison to the procedure and how much time does the regular procedure normally take?
ReplyDeleteWill, I appreciate your questions on my blog. You asked how much cheaper is the pill than the normal procedure. Well, the normal procedure can cost anywhere from $1,250-$4,800 with an average cost. For the gut probe in a pill, the cost is unknown as it has not been commercially released yet. However, I am positive that it will be cheaper as Guillermo Tearney (the main developer) stated that one of the main benefits of the pill is it is more cost effective than getting an endoscopy. It is also going to be incorporated into poor countries where citizens can most likely not afford to pay thousands of dollars for the service. Secondly, you asked how long the procedure normally takes. When getting an endoscopy, the procedure typically takes 15-30 minutes. However, it takes time to be put under anesthesia and 15-30 minutes is a long time to have a large tube down your throat. The gut probe is much quicker due to it's small size and live monitoring. It also doesn't require anesthesia. Thank you again for your comments.
DeleteHello Kyle, your blog was very intriguing, and left me with many questions. In part of your blog, you say "The main reason it is being invented is to environmental enteric dysfunction (EED), a disease found in children living in impoverished countries. This means people who are getting screened for this in poor countries should not have to pay for the service. However, is the pill limited to screening for EED? Absolutely not! This pill can be used worldwide to search for various abdominal issues..."(Brown). This is very helpful in understanding what the pill does better, but what other things can the pill screen for? Are there other diseases that may be tackled easier by this, or are there ailments that are completely resistant?
ReplyDeleteThank you for your comments Ian! There are other abdominal diseases that can be found by using the gut probe in a pill. For example, it can also screen for Barrett's esophagus, a disease that can lead to esophageal cancer. Additionally, it can screen for stomach cancers and celiac disease. You also asked if some ailments can not be screened for. Since the gut probe in a pill takes high resolution video images of the stomach, ailments that cannot be identified by discoloration or inpurities in the stomach cannot be detected by the pill. However, most ailments can be detected by changing the stomach.
ReplyDeleteCitations:
Hoffman, Adam, et al. “What the Pill Sees.” Proto Magazine, 30 Jan. 2015, protomag.com/articles/what-the-pill-sees.