Endiatx has begun clinical trials of its ingestible PillBot™, which will enable doctors to remotely examine the gastrointestinal tract of a patient over a zoom call.
Endiatx's technologies promise much more though, with the company planning to add tools to remove polyps, cauterize bleeds, sample the microbiome, and collect biopsy samples. The company's product development roadmap proposes a suite of robotic surgeons of ever-decreasing size and broadening applications for use within the human body.
The obvious benefits of this technology are immediate diagnosis anywhere on the planet with minimum invasiveness, but the company believes that one day in the not-too-distant future, an army of rice-grain-sized surgeons may operate on you while you go about your normal daily routine.
PillBot™ is a motorized robot pill that forms a virtual endoscope in the human stomach. This allows a gastroenterologist to conduct a basic upper endoscopy screening over a zoom call, with the patient in the comfort of their own home!
That is, the PillBot™ will be able to be maneuvered in the patient's stomach by a remote doctor, who will be able to view the live footage and make a diagnosis, while the patient will not need to make a hospital visit or undergo anesthesia and a time-consuming cavalcade of expensive medical procedures.
The above video offers the 60-second overview of the PillBot™, with the 24-minute video directly below offering an in-depth look at the PillBot™.
Quite clearly, the possibilities for the future of tele-health are exciting, but the technologies developed to enable the PillBot™ to move around in three dimensions in a liquid-filled human stomach may have applications in other difficult-to-access underwater environments, such as internal pipe inspection.
Source: Endiatx