Pills have become more than just a way to help the medicine go down. With generics now accounting for a bigger share of the 4 billion prescriptions written annually, Big Pharma is looking for ways to boost its pipeline. Enter the superpill:

Say cheese

 

A Pill That Can Take Pictures Inside Your Body

2:23

Alyssa Abkowitz on Lunch Break looks at pills that can take pictures as they pass through the body to detect medical issues.

By taking pictures as they pass through the GI tract, Given Imaging's PillCams help diagnose problems, sans invasive gastro tests. (Given Imaging says it's also working on a colonoscopy version.) The firm says PillCams make up 95 percent of the U.S. market for G.I. cameras -- though a group working on a high-def pill may change that. Intestines in HD, anyone?

Swallowing surveillance

Contact with stomach acid turns Proteus Biomedical's ingestible sensors into digital monitors, which can determine whether a patient took his meds or why her heart rate spiked. Pharma giant Novartis found the technology promising enough to plunk down $24 million to license it, and Proteus says it plans to debut it in Europe soon.

Take a whiff

It's not just docs who see pills' potential. A Dutch artist and biologist have teamed up to develop an ingestible perfume that emits a (good) fragrance when the pill popper sweats. There's no launch date yet for Swallowable Parfum, but deodorant makers beware: If it succeeds, that could be the end of swiping twice under each arm.