Dive Brief:
- The secretive Google [x] lab is developing a product that uses antibody-coated nanoparticles to detect diseases at the earliest stages.
- These nanoparticles could potentially be used to enhance scanning sensitivity and detect a heart attack before it happens.
- Head of life sciences at Google [x], Andrew Conrad, contends that this technology could eliminate the need for doctors' visits, giving individuals the ability to independently monitor their health.
Dive Insight:
A lot of health-related technologies in the earliest stages of development never come to fruition, but when Google talks, people listen. And people are certainly listening to Andrew Conrad as he explains the underlying technology for the diagnostic nanoparticles, which he says could be available to doctors within the next 10 years.
There is even a programming element involved, in which computer scientists create apps to tell the nanoparticles (which would be consumed orally) to travel around the body, pick up information, and report back to a monitoring system. Google[x] wants to develop this tech to the point that it can be picked up by another company which can then conduct the necessary clinical trials to assess efficacy, safety, and tolerability.