Hi-Tech Healing May Change The Way People Take Meds

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MIAMI (CBSMiami) - Do you sometimes forget to take your daily dose of prescription medication?

If keeping track of every little pill is too tough to swallow, there's a new option that some are calling "high-tech healing."

Technology has made it possible for a microchip to give your body the medication it needs.

"The chip will cure some diseases and the chip will prevent others," said Dr. Kevin Tracey a neurosurgeon at the Feinstein Institute in Long Island.

The chip is implanted in the body where it sends small electrical currents telling the nervous system to tell the body to heal itself.

"The diseases that can be treated by this approach is a lengthy list," Dr. Tracey said. "Cancer, diabetes, heart disease, stroke, Alzheimer's."

The chip is the brainchild of Dr. Tracey and it's launched a new field in healthcare known as bioelectronics.

"The promise of bioelectronic medicine is to restore the activity of nerves whose function, for whatever reason, disease or aging, are not functioning properly," Tracey explained.

Tracey says the technology is extremely precise and he says there are no side effects.

He compares it to how a pacemaker controls the nerves of the heart, except these new devices will control the nerves of the immune system, including nerves to tumors, cancer cells and the bladder.

Clinical trials for multiple chips are currently underway and positive results have been reported in treating conditions like rheumatoid arthritis and even appetite control.

"I figured, what did I have to lose?" Virginia Valles said.

Valles is one of the first to test a bioelectronics device for weight loss.

Since starting the trial four years ago, she's lost nearly 100 pounds.

"You get this feeling of fullness. It's like you just ate a nice, big meal," said Ken Fujioka, a weight loss researcher at the Scripps Research Institute in San Diego.

Instead of disappearing, drug makers like Glaxo Smith Kline are looking ahead and funding research in this next frontier.

"It's real," said Dr. Moncef Slaoui with GSK. "Every single disease that we have looked at we have found we could make medicines bioelectronically."

Bioelectronic devices are controlled by a smartphone or tablet that is programmed and monitored by the patient's doctor.