In April, Verily launched a new wearable health tracking device, Study Watch, and plans to use it on a large scale for medical research, mainly for health databases and Parkinson's disease research.

Verily has a new trend recently. According to CBINSIGHT Patent Search Engine, one of their new patents has just been granted (patent application was approved on February 2014 and May 8, 2017). This patent provides a non-invasive diagnostic system for a variety of diseases, including hormone problems. Infection and even cancer.

This diagnostic system monitors and evaluates the insertion or ingestion of a specific substance in the human body through wearable devices. By monitoring the type of particles interacting with the substance, the system can feed back potential disease risks to device users.

Working schematic diagram of Verily new patent system

Magic "engineering particles"

The patent, which came out fresh in the first two weeks, is specifically a contrast agent substance, somewhat similar to the imaging agent injected into the body before making magnetic resonance imaging (NMR).

According to the patent description, the injectable substance consists of "engineering particles" designed to interact with blood analytes such as human antibodies. This interaction will then be captured by the device on the user's wrist to diagnose a variety of diseases.

The official name of the patent is "Engineering Particles with Polarization Contraction and Linear Control for Enhanced Imaging". Engineering particles in the blood can be combined with antibodies, DNA, peptides or other proteins that can represent potential diseases, and then use electromagnetic waves penetrating the skin to interact with engineering particles to detect disease information. There are many ways to introduce engineering particles into the body, such as digestive tract intake, inhalation, injection, transdermal or other ways.

Patents show that engineering particles can be specially prepared materials, molecules, viruses or conductive nanorods, or even quantum dots, commonly known as "artificial atoms". It is also worth mentioning that these particles will be designed to remain in the human vascular system or body fluids for a long time.

Wristband equipment detects well

The electromagnetic wave transmitter worn on the wrist generates energy pulses, which then analyze the response of Engineering particles to pulses and determine whether the engineering particles have been attached to analytes such as cancer cells. Subsequently, as shown below, the device will present intuitive results to users.

1. the optical absorber will absorb the light emitted from the wrist strap device.

2. The light absorbed by the optical absorber will be transmitted to the energy emitter, and its transmission distance depends on the interaction with the specific analyte.

3. the wristband device detects the energy released by the energy transmitter.

Can be used for cancer diagnosis

The actual workflow is that physiological data collected from users will be sent to remote servers, which can be mobile devices, computers, clouds or other remote systems. The potential physiological indicators that can be used for testing include blood pressure, pulse, breathing rate and skin temperature.

The actual readings are then compared with the standard values, and if anomalies are found, recommendations will be made for users. Of course, these physiological data can also be downloaded by doctors.

The patent also shows that the diagnostic system can also be used to "destroy, damage or modify specific targets in other ways", so it has the potential to actually target and cure identified diseases, such as anti-cancer therapy and targeted chemotherapy.