Drug-delivery chip implant shows promise

We could easily use this with a monitoring device that checks your INR levels before releasing the next dose and wirelessly send results to your doctors office. This could be especially useful considering the dangers warfarin use has.
http://bostonglobe.com/business/2012/02/17/futuristic-implanted-chip-delivers-osteoporosis-drug-small-clinical-trial/nCe0o70slgKbxsVJIjO9jN/story.html

It sounds like science fiction: A doctor implants a device about the size of a domino just under the skin near a patient’s waistline. Over weeks, tiny sealed wells on a chip embedded on the device open one by one to release a potent drug on a schedule sent to it wirelessly.

But the futuristic scenario is real. Yesterday, scientists reported the first successful use of the novel technology in a small number of osteoporosis patients, 15 years after an MIT bioengineer was inspired by a television show about how computer chips are made.

“You could deliver many different medicines at once, a pharmacy on a chip,’’ said Robert Langer, who led the work. “You could do . . . remote control delivery, kind of like ‘Star Trek.’ ’’

The technology opens the door to a tantalizing array of possibilities: devices that could be programmed to release a drug by a doctor from afar, or implants that could automatically sense when a diabetic person’s blood sugar levels were dangerously low and release a drug. But the device, being developed by a small Waltham company, MicroCHIPS Inc., is still far from changing how the medicine goes down.