“The pill comes equipped with tiny sensors that detect the time it takes for those beams to bounce off your intestines and back to the device. It’s a little bit like SONAR technology used by submarines, or the LIDAR sensors that help Google’s robotic cars sense the world around them, except SONAR uses sound and LIDAR uses lasers.
The information it collects is stored on a patch the patient wears. When you poop out [the pill], the patch, which keeps tabs on the pill’s whereabouts inside you, notifies you through sound that it’s time to peel the patch off and take it to the doc for analysis.
[The] Cap Check [pill] isn’t yet available in the U.S. Right now, it’s going through clinical trials in Europe. CEO Bill Densel estimates that it’ll make its way Stateside sometime in 2016. Before it hits the market, it’ll need approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the agency that regulates medical devices. The FDA will want to make sure that the thing is safe—after all, you are ingesting a little bit of radiation—and that it’s at least as good, if not better, at detecting problems than methods already in use. Densel estimates the device will cost about $600, cheaper than a colonoscopy, which can run between $1,000 and $3,000.”
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