A TASTE OF YOUR OWN MEDICINE

Medication is often dosed in a ‘one size fits all’ way, however a team of engineers at the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering is working to change that. The engineers and their colleagues at Stanford School of Medicine have demonstrated that medication levels inside the body can be tracked in real time using a custom smartwatch they have created to analyse the chemicals found in sweat. This technology could facilitate a more personalised approach to prescribing medication, with dosages tailored to an individual. While medications can already be prescribed with consideration to factors such as a patient’s weight and age, our body chemistry constantly changes depending on, for example, what we eat and how much we’ve exercised. This can effect how medication interacts with the body. Also, our genetic makeup is unique and hence responses to medications can vary.

According to the researchers, current efforts to personalise drug dosage rely heavily on blood tests which can be inconvenient, timeconsuming, invasive and expensive. “We wanted to create a wearable technology that can track the profile of medication inside the body continuously and non-invasively,” says study leader Sam Emaminejad, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at UCLA. “This way, we can tailor the optimal dosage and timing of the intake for each individual, and improve the efficacy of the therapeutic treatments.”