Microsoft mulls printing up medication

9 May 2008 | 19:06 BST

By Sylvie Barak

MICROSOFT’S VISION OF THE future involves people being able to self medicate by printing out their own pharmaceutical drugs straight from a printer, according to a top Volish exec.

Craig Mundie, chief research and strategy officer at Microsoft, said he thought that at some point soon, people would be able to use their computers as part of a do-it-yourself style health care system, which could even have them printing up their own medication in droplet form.

He told a gathering in Jakarta, Indonesia today, the thought is not a big stretch of the imagination, because printers are already well-developed liquid delivery systems. What would change, however, would be that instead of cartridges filled with ink, a punter have to buy various medication cartridges to bung up their printer with.

This wasn’t the only medical innovation Mundie envisioned from technology devices in the near future. Referring to “drugstores-in-a-box”, Mundie went on to share his vision about breathalyzer mobile phones, which would also be able to analyse people’s breath to check for viruses, diseases, chemical imbalances and a host of other things (bad breath?). After self diagnosing by blowing into their mobile phone, a person could then hot foot it down to a clinic where the results could be examined and a proper diagnosis given.

If the diagnosis required it, the medic would then be able to plug all of a person’s stats into a computer, including age, weight, gender etc, and let the machine work out the exact dose of ingredients necessary to print up the perfect sheet of tablets that would cure them.

The Vole is not saying that this technology is already working, just that it’s an idea the company is seriously thinking about. Medication by Microsoft? Who would be brave enough to try it out. µ

L’Inq
InfoWorld

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