Wireless medical monitors transforming patient care

It's hard to find a better example of how technology is revolutionizing patient care than the tiny edible sensor Proteus Biomedical of Redwood City plans to begin selling this fall in the United Kingdom.

When the grain-of-sand-size sensor is integrated into a drug tablet or capsule and activated by stomach fluid, it signals when the medicine was taken to a patch on the patient's body. Then the patch relays the information along with the person's heart rate and other medical details to a caregiver's phone -- all without a visit to the doctor. "We're seeing an enormous surge in demand for health services across the globe," said Proteus CEO Andrew Thompson, noting that he plans to offer a similar product in the United States. To meet that need inexpensively, he added, "health care must digitize. It must move into the 21st century."

Some experts predict that in the near future tens of millions of Americans will be tethered to gadgets that will automatically send their vital signs to medical professionals, relatives and concerned friends. The technology already has generated an industry worth well over $1 billion a year. And despite concerns that the data transmitted by patients could overwhelm doctors and be spied on by hackers, the trend is widely expected to transform the relationship between patients and physicians.