Acid-Detecting Biomedical Transmitter Available

SEWilco writes: "This Medtronic press release announces a wireless stomach monitor. Actually, it's fastened internally ( and is less unpleasant than the older testing method) just above the stomach to detect acid getting to the wrong place. Results are sent to an external device, later uploaded for analysis. It's not as elaborate as the swallowable camera we've discussed, but this has been commercially introduced so there will be people walking around with these...for the few days that they last. It's available in the trendy translucent case design, but by prescription only. I suspect the over-the-counter market is rather small."

Big brother just taking another step..

[TSTM]

Now they will monitor your stomach.
They already monitor your movement by cell phone.
They have every possible fact that there is to know about you. (what you buy, wear, like, etc)

It's just the matter of time..

Re:Big brother just taking another step..

[Cyno01]

yeah, if they monitor your stomach you'll start recieving junk mail based on you digestive processes "a special offer for people who had lasagna for lunch last tuesday"

Wish I had one of these.

[Cuthalion]

Like seemingly most /. readers I have had my share of debiliating and/or unpleasant medical or emotional problems. Thus I had to wear one of the 24-hour nasal catheters that this technology will replace, on several occasions. The way it works is they stick a tube up your nose, down your throat, and attach it to a walkman sized gizmo that's recording the output. Then they say "go home, and have a regular day at junior high". Then they monitor the acid levels throughout this "normal" day. It's not really all that unpleasant, in terms of medical procedure, but socially the "normal day" was no walk in the park.

I'm just thankful that my gastrointestinal problems were all upper GI. Talk about unpleasant medical procedures!

Re:Wish I had one of these.

[BagOBones]

I would imagine that insertion and removal of the device where the worst part of that procedure.

Re:Wish I had one of these.

[Cuthalion]

In terms of physical discomfort, it was basically unnoticable during the day, but yeah, insertion was kind of weird, and removal tickled my gag reflex. But it was surprisingly non-awful.

The new medical device from Apple.

[Big Sean O]

iBelly.

(AP - Cupertino, CA) Apple Computers has announced the release of the iBelly. An AirPort enabled device which will allow computer-users to monitor their stomach acid.

Through a Menubar Icon of a pulsating stomach, users can tell if their stomach is normal (a pepto-bismol pink) or overly-acidic (pulsing red).

Apple CEO Steven Jobs presented the iBelly in front of the O'Reilly and Associates Conference for Bioinformatics at Pepperdine University.

As he stood in front of the group he proudly claimed, "I put a iBelly in one of the free boxes of Smints we were giving out at the door. Then he proceeded to monitor the belly of one of the attendees.

The iBelly performed flawlessly. Jobs was able to identify the iBelly-equipped attendee by matching her coffee-sipping with the stomach acid.

And in other news

[t0qer]

Hippies were rounded up by the thousands

see you on the inside

[Cyno01]

its very strange to walk into school and have your friend loudly ask if we wanted to see (internal) pictures of her small intestine, but i suppose this will become more common with devices such as these