AMC for your body

Monday, January 01, 2007

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You must have heard about the Annual Maintenance Contract (AMC) of IT infrastructure, home appliances and other device. But, how about the AMC of human body?

Interesting? In a world where we are hard pressed for time to pay attention to our own self, it won't be a bad idea to give maintenance contracts for our own body to a third party. That's ok, but who has the time to keep a check on his health and spend time to go for regular check ups? Not many people really. To bypass the hassles of going for regular check ups and not to ignore the slightest of health warnings, technology could come to rescue in a very interesting way.

Well, there ought to have been an arrangement whereby health insurance and healthcare companies would keep a check on your health somehow automatically, rather than you going to them after you face a problem. It is possible. Biological chip is the answer. And by the way they are already there, though in the R&D phase. These biological chips are the microchips that will be installed in a person's body to periodically monitor several of health parameters like blood pressure, blood sugar, pulse rate and so on. The microchips would also have the potential to capture and
analyze all electrochemical and electromagnetic signals inside the body including nerve impulses.

Sanjay Majumdar Issue Editor for this month

The microchips will collect all data and send it across to a data center, where it will be analyzed by experts with the help of software. On processing and evaluating the data, they will ascertain whether the person is facing any health threat or not and intimate him accordingly. They may even send the data across to a specialized processor to recommend any medication and further check ups. Well, you may not even need to visit the hospital for many tests.

The technology could prove a landmark breakthrough in not only diagnosing many diseases but also preventing them. The possibility of a heart attack could well be judged with the help of the biosensor that could easily detect any change in blood protein levels. An early detection of any health threat this way, instead of waiting for the symptoms to show or finding it accidentally on a fortunate accidental visit, could revolutionize the healthcare system altogether. Coming to a very ideal scenario, the chips might undergo such integration that we could inject them into new-born babies-a whole new technological dimension to parenting. In fact, research in this area is already underway in many universities and research labs. And Specialists of the Central Administrative Board of Research Institute of Experimental Medicine (Russian Academy of Medical Sciences) are developing biological microchips that will allow detecting a very early stage of diabetes. And it will help doctors to treat diabetic patients in early stages. Research is also on to develop a device that will inject insulin automatically into the body.

So in near future, you might see a device that will contain insulin, externally attached to the human body and connected to a biological microchip. The chip will calculate blood sugar level in the body and when the levels go down a particular threshold, the device will inject required amount of insulin into the body. This would be of great help to those who need regular and frequent intakes of insulin, especially children.

While all this is underway, there are some serious issues to be addressed before these biochips become as common as an injection. Is there enough crash-proof technology available to support the system? What if the chip's Bluetooth connection with your phone fails and it is not able to send its data across to your phone? How affordable will the technology be? What will happen, if the firmware inside the chip got corrupted and output wrong data? Will there be any side effects to your body on implanting the chip? Or will it be possible to wear the chip like a bracelet?

So before the technology matures, these issues need to be taken care of by careful and intense testing. We are surely on the verge of a revolution not only in the healthcare but also in medical technology. Let's hope for the best!

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