In an apparent effort to further depersonalize medicine, the National Science Foundation (NSF) is funding research into an implantable microchip capable of digitally monitoring the health of patients and reporting their vital statistics to doctors’ offices without the need for an actual doctor-patient interaction.
Reports indicate that NSF has given a $5,070 grant to a graduate fellowship project tasked with developing an implantable antenna, of sorts, to keep track of patients’ vital signs. The device, after being implanted just below a patient’s skin, would be capable of monitoring medical devices, for instance, and both uploading and downloading data for use in patient tracking.
The project has been categorized as a way to attain better “long-term patient monitoring,” though idea-makers claim that the chips won’t necessarily be permanent. Instead, they would be used for tracking primarily medical devices, though data on patient health would also be accessible remotely to nurses and doctors.
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