As any good, or bad, sci-fi film will tell you, getting your blood implanted with little robots can never end well. You are liable to become a walking automaton used to pull off dastardly deeds for an evil mega-villain. However, in the real world, getting your blood implanted with devices can have all kinds of uses, from checking up on your vital statistics to helping eradicate harmful diseases. This kind of technology is still in its infancy but one company has just made a major breakthrough that is likely to pique your curiosity.
Scientists at Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland have up and done it. They’ve created the smallest implant in the whole world. Just how small is it? Well, it can be inserted into your bloodstream without any white blood cells being any the wiser. It’s also useful. This 14mm long implant is used to measures things in your blood like proteins, glucose levels, lactate and ATP, both at rest and during activity. This useful information can then be sent to your doctor’s smartphone for further perusal. Unless your doctor is a James Bond villain, you should be fine on the walking automaton thing.
This implant even comes packed in with Bluetooth functionality and even the ability to remain charged used the electronic power of your skin. Pretty cool right? The number of useful applications here is staggering, from being able to detect heart attacks before they happen to keeping track of any number of diseases. Of course, this is new tech. So it’ll be awhile before this sort of thing becomes ubiquitous.
