The gastrointestinal tract is considered our second brain. Over one million neurons span the entire length of the GI tract and independently control complex activities like motility and digestion. Our understanding of this complicated neuro-endocrine system is still at its infancy. Yet, the implication of gut dysmotility and neuro-endocrine disturbances affect many aspects of our health including obesity, diabetes, acid reflux, gastroparesis, achalasia, and irritable bowel syndrome.

G-Tech Medical is a startup medical company founded in 2008 by Uday S. Devanaboyina. The founder’ goal is to understand gut electrical signals and motility patterns associated with certain diseases like irritable bowel syndrome, IBS. G-Tech has developed a waterproof wireless patch that attaches to the skin and measure electrical activity from the stomach, small intestine and colon. Steve Axelrod, PhD is concentrating on studying IBS and postoperative ileus. The patch, however, if validated as a reliable tool to measure gut electrical activity, can be extremely valuable in understanding the relationship between gut neural activity and obesity, diabetes, GERD and other disorders. Potential application of the G-Tech patch include:

1. Compare fasting to post-prandial gut electrical signals in patients with insulin resistance, obesity and type 2 diabetes.
2. Evaluate gut electrical activity before and after gastric sleeve and gastric bypass surgery to understand bariatric surgery mechanism of action.
3. The same way, we use an EKG to check for a myocardial infarction in a stress test, we can stress the gut with certain foods of varying glycemic loads and study changes in gastrointestinal electrical activity. We can also correlate these changes to variation in neuro-endocrine hormone secretion of GLP-1, PYY and Ghrelin.
4. Postprandial electrical signals can be studied in GERD patients and correlate between these signals and transient lower esophageal sphincter relaxation associated with acid reflux episodes.

G-Tech Medical is attempting to take the enteric nervous system out of obscurity. It is an endeavor that I wholeheartedly encourage and support. We hope their research and studies will find clinical applications that will help millions of patients in the near future.