America and our pills. Got an ailment? The docs have a solution, and it's usually in pill form. Make fun of that all you want, but it's the way the world works now. The best kind of medicine is the kind that seeks innovation, something that leads to a breakthrough. That is what Google is currently working on- a breakthrough in human diseases. The company is currently working to develop a pill that you could pop to detect cancer.

Google[x], the tech giant's secretive lab, is on its third project in health initiatives. You might remember Google's smart contact lens from earlier this year, which measured glucose levels in diabetic patients. Also, the company developed a utensil to help Parkinson's patients deal with their hand tremors (Tech Crunch). Now, the third series in this health initiative involves pill that would send tiny magnetic particles through a patient's bloodstream in order to detect cancer and diseases.

Nanoparticles (particles about one billionth of a meter in width), are described as “the nexus between biology and engineering”. They work by coupling “magnetic material with antibodies or proteins that can attach to and detect other molecules inside the body”, says Google[x] head of life sciences Andrew Conrad. Conrad described a wearable device, which after applied to the patient's skin, would program the said particles to spread throughout different parts of the body. After attaching to different cellular structures in the body (such as proteins, cells, and molecules), the device “calls” the particles to count and compile information regarding the person's medical condition.

The vision is more than five years away, and Google plans to license the technology to other companies. It would eliminate the need to provide doctors with blood and urine samples, and could easily implement using cloud storage when uploading patient data. The patient could even take this type of pill on a daily basis. That way, doctors could pin point exactly when a person's health deteriorated or disease was detected. The project may have a while to go, but the U.S. Government’s interest in the study is immense, with over $20 billion invested in nanotechnology research since 2013. Additionally, Conrad is more than hopeful that this technology will be seen “in the hands of every doctor within the next decade”. Considering the amount of lives that could be saved, I give a thumbs up to nanotechnology.