Non-compliance to medication leads to 3.5 million hospital admissions in the United States annually and 11 percent of all admissions to the emergency room. In the elderly population, an estimated 40 percent of all admissions are due to medication problems.  To reduce that error rate, Proteus Biomedical Inc. has developed a chip-embedded pill that beams reports to doctors and family when a medicine is taken. The Redwood City company is also developing a way to track how the patient is responding to the medication and whether the dosage is appropriate. The private, early-stage company is pioneering "intelligent medicine," an emerging field that integrates electronics, sensors and wireless communications into medical devices and pharmaceuticals. Proteus aims to provide information tools that simplify and improve a person's daily lifestyle, according to Chief Executive Officer Andrew Thompson.

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