Google's lifescience company, Google's X lab has announced its new project, the "Nanoparticle Platform" to develop a pill that could send microscopic particles into the bloodstream in an effort to identify cancers, imminent heart attacks, and other diseases. The project is part of the company's wider effort to develop new technologies capable of improving healthcare.

The company is making nanoparticles that combine a magnetic material with antibodies or proteins that can attach to and detect other molecules inside the body. The pill that contains these particles enter the bloodstream in an attempt to identify molecules that would indicate certain health problems, a wearable device could use their magnetic cores to gather them back together and read what they've found.

"Google X's job is to take on the big problems, to try to find clever solutions to big problems, and one of the problems we decided to tackle was healthcare. The way in which we envision doing this is inverting the paradigm in medicine-which is currently reactive and episodic-to a new paradigm that is proactive and cumulative," said Mr Andrew Conrad, the head of lifesciences inside the company's Google X research lab.

The wearable device that reads these particles, could be configured to send information, across the internet, back to a doctor. The idea is to monitor health in a more consistent way.

The company is looking for partners who would license the technology and bring products to the market.