Mission

PillBot™ and future Endiatx products will be true telemedicine. They will dramatically increase access to care while simultaneously lowering costs and increasing doctors' effectiveness.

Problem

Many of the 11,000 in the US and 800,000 globally who die from stomach cancer each year are diagnosed too late for doctors to save their lives. They don’t receive traditional upper endoscopy (EGD) because facilities and personnel are overbooked. By enabling telemedicine stomach cancer screening, even for people who don’t live near a hospital, PillBot™ will save lives at the same time that it eases burdens on facilities and allows GI doctors to treat more patients. PillBot™ will be a giant step in telemedicine, permitting equal access to lifesaving technology.
Solution
PillBot™ is the world’s first motorized pill camera for telemedicine. It replaces the upper endoscopy (EGD) by letting doctors have a quick look inside the stomach over a telemedicine call. Not much larger than a pistachio, PillBot™ uses pumpjet thrusters to maneuver like a multicopter drone. With no preparation other than skipping a meal and drinking regular water, the user swallows PillBot™ while awake. The remote physician steers PillBot™ in the patient’s stomach using a smartphone app. PillBot™ shuts down and then passes out of the body 6-24 hours later.

The Market

  • Increasing prevalence of GI cancers and growing geriatric population guarantee demand
  • PillBot™ will likely be reimbursed for $500+
  • Doctors will prefer PillBot™ because it lets them screen more patients, more quickly, with lower demands on facilities
  • Patients will instinctively prefer PillBot™ over the invasive, expensive, and time-consuming EGD
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Micro-robotics in the Human Body

PillBot™ is under development and is not yet FDA approved.