"Within 45 seconds, a microprocessor computes your systolic and diastolic pressure... has an LCD readout, and it's cost effective - less than one visit to the doctor. So what's on your mind kimosabe? Why am I listening to you?" - Gordon Gekko in Wall Street (1987), explains how his automatic blood pressure monitor works

Matters of life and death tend to accelerate technological innovation. So it was with the longbow, the Gatling gun and Arpanet; and so it is now with biomedical advances, where some incredible examples of a new wave of ubiquitous computing can be found.

In this interview (held at the World Economic Forum in Davos), tech blogger Robert Scoble speaks with Andrew Thompson, CEO of Proteus Biomedical. He offers some insights on healthcare, personal medicine, the democratization of technology and regulatory challenges.

The mind-blast of this interview however are Proteus' ingestible sensors, designed to track drug data from inside your body.

The devices are called 'ingestible event markers (IEMs). They are a body-powered ingestible technology, the size and consistency of a grain of sand. Activated by your stomach fluids, IEMs communicate with a parent device, worn as a skin-patch. That device, in turn, can connect with your smartphone and so integrate with virtually anything; healthcare apps, remote reporting processes, medical histories, and user-customisable reminder and alert functionality.

Working ingestible devices are actually not that new. Astronauts, NFL players and firefighters have been ingesting technology in pill form, to monitor heart rate, hydration and body heat for almost two decades. But IEMs are an entirely new prospect. 

The interesting commercial aspect is the creation of a new ecosystem. Proteus are planning to create and own the software/hardware ecosystem (their Raisin and Chipskin platforms) for the delivery of medicines, in the same way that Apple created a new ecosystem for the delivery of music.

As medicines come out of patent and their efficacy is continually assessed, and in an age where people have taken ownership of our health, assistive technologies which empower and inform will be increasingly important. 

Alvin Toffler effectively described this third wave economy, where "the central resource – a single word broadly encompassing data, information, images, symbols, culture, ideology, and values – is actionable knowledge".

Increasingly that knowledge is being generated through embedded, implanted systems such as Proteus' Raisin, with data as an active ingredient.