PillBot™ will use the stomach as the beachhead for confirming the viability of robotics within the human body. PillBot™ will let patients anywhere across the globe receive immediate stomach diagnosis and screening via telemedicine calls.
Building on this revolutionary technological achievement, Endiatx will develop additional robotic devices with increasing features and miniaturization. Next will come PillSurgeon™, which will use the PillBot™ platform but add tools to remove polyps, cauterize bleeds, sample the microbiome, and collect biopsy.
Beyond this, Endiatx envisions a suite of robotic surgeons of ever-decreasing size and broadening scope of applications within the human body. One day an army of rice grain-size surgeons may remove your brain tumor while you go about your day as normal.
When two bicycle mechanics combined their gears and pedals with wood and canvas and experimented with airplanes in 1903, they likely didn’t imagine that 66 years later humans would walk on the moon. Who knows where the micro-robotics adventure will take us?
Problem
Many of the 11,000 in the US and 800,000 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.
