Tiny Ingestible Sensor Monitors Drug Adherence

A sensor the size of a grain of sand can now be used to monitor a patient’s adherence to medication and communicate the data to caregivers.

The Proteus Ingestible sensor is just 1 mm square in size, and is made mostly of silicon and miniature electronics. It does not contain a battery, but is instead powered for a short amount of time by contact between two conductive materials and stomach acid. At that time, it sends a signal to the proprietary Proteus Patch—an adhesive patch worn on the torso—which records the exact time the medication was taken, as well as the unique identity of the drug. The ingestible sensor can be integrated with the medication itself.


Besides time of ingestion, the Proteus Patch can also record rest and heart rate, body position, and activity, and communicates the data to a mobile app via Bluetooth. With the patient’s consent, the information is then accessible to caregivers and clinicians, helping individuals develop and sustain healthy habits, families make better health choices, and clinicians provide more effective, data-driven care. The Proteus Ingestible sensor and Patch are products of Proteus Digital Health (Redwood City, CA, USA), and have been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

“The new system is the first time adherence data from Proteus’s system will integrate directly into an electronic data capture system,” said the company in a press statement. “It will allow clinical trial investigators access to accurate medication adherence data, something for which they currently rely on self-reporting and occasional lab tests.”

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Proteus Digital Health