Rafe Needleman discovered an interesting young Swedish company which is printing really cheap chips. Here are some excerpts of his article, "Coming Soon: Printed Computers."
The company, Cypak, has technology to mount a very small microprocessor, which it created, on paper (or inside a credit card), as well as a technique to print sensors, switches, and very short-range antennae on the same paper, using special conductive inks.
Here is one possible application designed for drug trials.
Drug trials need data about how and when subjects consume the drugs being tested. In this application, a pill pack registers when individual pills are popped out of their plastic bubbles; it then can beep and ask the user a question like, "Are you feeling better today? Press Yes or No." (The answer buttons are on the pack itself.) When the patient visits the doctor, the package is placed on a Cypak reader and the data is downloaded to the physician's computer.
Certus, a drug-testing company, has just begun testing Cypak's technology. Compared with logging and "compliance" products that use more traditional computer parts and sensors, the Cypak technology is less expensive. The chips embedded in the paper drug packages cost only a buck or two, and the scanners that read the data from the used packages are inexpensive as well -- less than $10, Cypak CEO Jakob Ehrensvärd says. Also, the data is more reliable than the logs that patients might keep.
Rafe Needleman is quite optimistic about Cypak's future.
It's clear that more and more items, like shipping boxes, eventually will be able to monitor themselves, and that an increasing number of devices will support some kind of authentication feature. Cypak-like technology will play a part in this.
Cypak's technology currently costs a dollar or more per unit. That's pretty cheap for a computer, but still too expensive for everyday products. Still, there are solid industry-specific applications for this technology -- enough, most likely, to make a success out of Cypak.
More information about Cypaq's intelligent pharmaceutical packaging can be found at their Electronic Compliance Packaging webpage.
Source: Rafe Needleman, Business 2.0, February 3, 2003
10:59:47 AM Permalink
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