Pills that only contain medicine are so very 20th century. Swiss pharmacy house Novartis thinks pills needn't merely deliver medicine to the bloodstream, but could also monitor its effects and transmit data to physicians.
仅含药物的药片已经过时。瑞士制药企业诺华公司认为药片不仅需要把药物送至血管，还应能够监测药效，把相关数据传送给医生。
As such, the firm plans to bring a chip-in-a-pill technology before European regulators within 18 months that can both deliver drugs and transmit information from inside a patient's body to a patch worn on the patient's skin. That patch in turn can transmit data to a smartphone or wireless network and on to the patient's doctor.
由此，诺华公司计划在18个月内将含芯片制药技术提交给欧洲监管机构评估。这项技术既能传送药物，还能将疗效状况从患者体内传送至病人皮肤上的接收器上。疗效数据经由智能手机或无线网络然后传达给医生。
The ingestible chips would be activated by stomach acid to notify doctors that patients are taking their medicines on schedule and at the proper dose. As such, the technology will originally be packaged with one of Novartis's established transplant drugs that reduce the likelihood of organ rejection in patients.
这种可服用芯片会在胃酸的作用下激活，通知医生病人在按时按量服药。这项技术将首先应用于诺华公司生产器官移植反排斥药物里。
But the company hopes its technology will be adopted as part of many regular pill regimens, transmitting a range of biological data to physicians so they can monitor not only their patients' pharmaceutical intakes, but also how well the drugs are working. The ability to regularly monitor things like temperature and heart rate could help physicians better tailor a medication regimen for individual patients to ensure their dosage is as close to perfect as possible.
不过，诺华公司希望这项技术也能应用于其他常规药片生产，将各种生物数据传送给医生，以便医生监测病人的药物摄入情况，观察药效。定时监测体温和心率等指标有助于医生更好地因人处方，对症下药，确保最佳药物摄入量。 |