Development of a Wearable System for the Detection of Ingestible Medication Based on Electromagnetic Waves

Abstract

Managing medication status solves related complications and prevents increases in medical costs due to the improper management of prescriptions. An ingestible sensor can be used to confirm a patient’s real-time medical status by measuring the electromagnetic waves transmitted from an ingested medication from outside of the human body. However, concerns about costs of delivery arise, as it would be necessary to attach a sensor to each ingested medication. In this study, we focused on using an electromagnetic (EM) imaging method which can estimate the internal structure of various objects using a scattered electric field. With this method we can detect medication as it does not require the installation of a sensor. At first we performed an electromagnetic field simulation and based on the results we experimentally measured the external electric field, which changes with the medicine. Then, we evaluated the accuracy of the detection method by calculating the difference between the detection rate with the proposed detection method against a more conventional method. The results indicate the possibility of achieving a more than 20% higher accuracy than the conventional detection method with our proposed method using electromagnetic waves.