Chapter 2

Chapter 2: Opening the black box

While we let Student C enjoy her cheesecake, let’s go to the 20^th century after the invention of radio, some inventor is proposing to an investor about his new invention. The investor is sitting on his chair while the so-called inventor is standing up and trying to persuade the investor.

Inventor: I have got a big idea. Here is the thing. We have this pill that everyone has to take but a lot of the times he or she forgets to take the pill, and this could be really dangerous for a heart patient or a diabetic patient. So, what do we do? We make a radio tiny enough to go into the patient’s stomach with the pill, and so we can keep track of his medication patterns when the radio gives out signal from inside the stomach.

Investor: So, we send radios down everyone’s throat?

Inventor: Yes.

Investor: You must be crazy. Have you seen the size of those things?

Inventor: Yes, but in 50 years we can make smaller…

Investor: Those things are never getting smaller. (ordering his guards) Kick him out.

[The guards take the inventor out of the room, and kick him in his butt onto the street. The inventor probably forgot he was in the wrong century.]

[Now, let’s go back a few years later into the early 21^st century. The investor from earlier episode has got really old and there is an innovator who wants to talk about his idea.]

Innovator: I have got a big idea. Here is the thing. We have this pill that everyone has to take but a lot of the times he or she forgets to take the pill, and this could be really dangerous for a heart patient or a diabetic patient. So, what do we do? We make a radio tiny enough to go into the patient’s stomach with the pill. So, when the radio when the radio gives out signal from inside the stomach, we can keep track of his medication patterns and store it in a mobile phone app.

Investor: So, we send radios down everyone’s throat?

Innovator: Yes. But since the invention of integrated circuits and advancement in the CMOS technology, many things that we thought were impossible are now possible. As we know CMOS is a technology used to make integrated circuits, and integrated circuits are used to make from microprocessors to memories. (4) With the current technology we can fit as many transistors in a very tiny area. Now, they are also widely used in making RF (radio frequency) circuits, for instance, in radios that receive transmit and receive signals in cellphones. So, now we really have the process technology, with the current state of the art 14 nm technology, we can really make tiny radios. We can make tiny sensors that can be swallowed by patients. Or we can make tiny implants to put in the patient’s bodies. 

Investor: That’s very impressive. But how are we going to power them?

Innovator: Well, we are going to put a 3 V battery with every radio that we use in the pill.

Investor: That’s just going to be a fucking waste of money on those batteries. Guards, kick him out.

[The innovator is kicked out.

One or two year later same investor, another entrepreneur comes up with the same idea.]

Entrepreneur: I have got a big idea. Here is the thing. We have this pill that everyone has to take but a lot of the times he or she forgets to take the pill, and this could be really dangerous for a heart patient or a diabetic patient. So, what do we do? We make a radio tiny…. (before he can complete)

Investor: A radio tiny enough to go into the patient’s stomach with the pill so that when the radio gives out signal from inside the stomach, we can keep track of his medication patterns and store it in a mobile phone app. I have heard that couple of times What next?

Entrepreneur: Don’t you want to know how we can do that?

Investor: (getting impatient of hearing the same things all over again) I already know. Because of the advanced CMOS technology you can make really tiny transistors. I know everything. What else have you got? How are you going to power them?

Entrepreneur: So, are you ready to hear this?

Investor: Of course, I am ready to hear anything. I am an investor. I am not here to dance. I am here to listen.

Entrepreneur: Well, sir, you must be really ready to hear this. This is amazingly mind blowing.

Investor: I am going to blow you away with my fart if you don’t speak and keep me waiting.

Entrepreneur: (intimidated) Okay, okay. It’s going to be powered by you.

Investor: What?

Entrepreneur: Powered by you, sir.

Investor: What are you talking about? Don’t drive me nuts. (he seems to be a patient of high blood pressure and a disease called severe anger) So, are you trying to use one of those energy-harvesting ideas? So, what do you want to use? Some kind of device that can get power from the RF waves in the ambient environment? Or some kind of device that can get power from the heat energy from your body or from the vibration of your body?

Entrepreneur: No, sir. It’s even better. You remember the potato battery from your high school? Two metals and a wet potato can produce electricity, right?

Investor: So, are you going to make all of them to swallow potatoes?

Entrepreneur: Nice one, sir. Very funny. (seeing investor’s stern face, continues) Just like the potato battery, we make a sensor, which beside having a CMOS chip, also has two electrodes, magnesium and copper chloride, which gives the best results, and when the sensor is in your stomach, the stomach juices acts as electrolyte, and hence, a battery is born, and the tiny sensor is powered by that battery until both of the electrodes dissolve. (5) Until then, the tiny sensor can relay information to the sensor patch on the body, which is connected to the smartphone. (hearing nothing from the investor) Are you shocked, sir?

Investor: That’s a great idea. Guards, kick him out.

Entrepreneur: (shocked at this response) Why, but why? (as guards approach him)

Investor: Just kidding. I just wanted to see you more shocked than me. We have a deal.

Both shake hands, and that’s how they say Proteus Digital Health as a company started.

Now, let’s go ahead a century to the 22^nd century. We have been time travelling quite a bit now, so we might be losing some track of time here. But bear in mind, people often do lose the track of time.

So, now we move to the 22^nd century, where Professor Billy is teaching a class. The classes are no more held in rooms, but it’s held online. Stanford University, as they say, has been recently by archeologists as the lost university buried underwater for about a decade or maybe more. Now, there are no more universities but online teaching corporations, and Billy is teaching a class called Advanced Archeology 152, and he is summarizing about the design of Proteus Digital Health, which is one of the artifacts he is discussing this semester.

Professor Billy: So, my fellow kids, today’s lesson was about Proteus Digital Health’s Helius and how it is an innovation that represents the crossroads of “sensors, wireless, remote monitoring and mobile”. So, innovation and invention is not always about making entirely new design. It is about a crossroad – applying pre existing solutions to new problems. Proteus Digital Health takes the already existing solutions or things such as a radio, which has been here with us for more than two centuries. But because of today’s technology, they can make the same radio, scale it down to a size of a grain and use them to transmit messages from inside a stomach. Similarly, a voltaic cell was invented in the 1800. It is just a very simple concept that has been taught in all physics and chemistry classes, and here they used the same simple concept, same simple cell to make a self-powering sensor inside a stomach. Similarly, the patch that is put on the skin of the user, it uses Bluetooth to connect to your mobile phone. It is again a solution that has been in existence for quite a bit since it was invented in 1994. It is just a standard transmission protocol every mobile phone has, and they just used it to transfer the data from the sensor to your phone, which is organized by software in your phone. Similarly, the advancement in the smartphone technology is also a huge contributor to this product. Since the advent of smartphones, innovators could write software apps for these smartphones, which when they combine with the available sensors, can do a lot of things. Now, this again was a preexisting technology at that time, which they exploited to empower the patients to take charge of their own health.

Professor Billy: Now, Proteus Digital Health’s Helius is a system that is not just about the thing itself. First of all, it is not just about a "thing". It is about gathering of things – it consists of a mobile phone, an ingestible sensor and a sensor patch on your torso. And each thing is a combination of other things, like the ingestible sensor is a combination of a drug, simple voltaic cell, and a radio in a tiny chip. But this system is not just about materials, but also about a network of people. The data that you get is first of all available to you. But you can also share it with your family or close relatives. You can also share it with your doctors for your health monitoring. Without these people, this system is not complete; it is not as powerful as a product or an artifact. So, it is also about an extra layer of network. Today, we have these sensors and this type of technology in everything, from food to water to every prescribed pill, so we don’t really care about it much. But while looking at its design, we have to look at these aspects of design. This is what we can learn from today’s class. Any more questions? (without waiting for more than 2 seconds) Alright, today we are done.

Professor Billy finishes his class. He is probably tired today and doesn’t want to hang around more to talk with his students. Once, in a while everyone gets tired. To get rid of this exhaustion, he goes to do some meditation center, which is a building where they have planted artificial trees inside so one can get a feeling that one is in a real forest. Sometimes, they also leave wild animals like fox to make the feeling more real.