Thirteen doctoral researchers will train to build ingestible electronic devices that patients can swallow like a pill, replacing invasive procedures with miniature machines that travel through the gut. Current diagnosis and treatment of gastrointestinal conditions often rely on endoscopy, surgery, or daily medication regimens that many patients struggle to maintain. Ingestible devices could change that—offering targeted drug delivery directly to diseased tissue, less invasive biopsies, and continuous monitoring through multiple sensors guided by artificial intelligence. But the technology faces four bottlenecks: knowing exactly where a device is inside the body at any moment, packing enough diagnostic and therapeutic capability into a tiny package, making single-use devices environmentally sustainable, and reducing reliance on expensive animal testing during development. If the network succeeds, patients with chronic conditions such as inflammatory bowel disease might one day swallow a device that releases medication over weeks, eliminating daily injections or pills. The research also aims to produce cheaper, faster ways to test new ingestible technologies, accelerating their path from lab to clinic. The 13 trained researchers will form a skilled workforce for a field expected to grow rapidly as miniaturisation and AI converge on medicine.
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The Intelli-Ingest Doctoral Network will train 13 researchers in the development of minimally invasive, orally delivered miniaturised devices. This ingestible technology has the potential to unlock significant advances across the medical sciences, whether it is enhanced diagnosis through the application of artificial intelligence or the integration of multiple sensors into these devices, surgery through less invasive biopsy or treatment through targeted drug delivery direct to the site of interest or the development of therapeutic form factors that can safely reside within the gastrointestinal tract for extended periods, removing the need for daily treatment and improving the adherence of patients to the treatment regimen. However, to achieve this potential, several scientific challenges must be addressed. These include needing more accurate localisation, improving our ability to know where the devices are along the gastrointestinal tract at any time for better treatment and repeated diagnosis. The second challenge is the need to integrate more advanced diagnostic and therapeutic technology, which is vital for more accurate identification and treatment of pathology. The third challenge is environmental sustainability; more sustainable designs are crucial due to the single-use nature of most ingestible devices and their growing use post-pandemic. Finally, to rapidly innovate in the ingestible device field, we need better tools to advance translation at low cost, reducing the use of costly animal models. The 13 doctoral candidates will tackle these challenges, advancing the state of the art in ingestible device technology while benefiting from multidisciplinary, multi-sectoral, international training provided by leaders in this field. This training will provide these candidates with extensive technical, translational and transferable skills training that will enhance their future career prospects in this growing field of research.
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