Say goodbye to doctor’s visits and pharmacies. A revolution in healthcare may be on the horizon: It’s time to treat disease before it makes you sick. Taking just one pill could do that.

This proposed pill takes advantage of the fact that cells in our internal organs – liver, lungs, heart, and even brain – release a litany of chemicals at every moment. When someone has signs of pending disease – say, inflammation in the lungs or clogged arteries – the pill would detect how this release of chemicals changes over time. Then, it would sense and determine what combination of medications would be required to rectify the situation. Finally, it would instantly order and deliver the precise medication needed.

This technological idea already exists for diabetes. When a diabetic person’s blood sugar dips too low, an automated pump delivers insulin to combat the low blood sugar. And biocompatible, stretchable sensors are currently in clinical trials for monitoring infants’ health in the neonatal ICU.

But more sophisticated techniques are hitting the scene now. At the MIT Media Lab in Cambridge, Dr. Canan Dagdeviren has invented a device called a “Conformable Decoder.” It comes in pill form, unfurls in the stomach, sticks to the stomach lining, and then provides data on how the gut is doing at all hours. You can imagine the same technology being used to prevent heart attacks: biosensors embedded in the heart would detect a pending attack well before it takes place, and deliver the precise medications needed to prevent it from occurring.

It’s possible these devices could be implanted into each of our organs. We could swallow a pill that breaks apart and delivers microscopic biosensor devices to each organ. There, the biosensors would spend their time diagnosing potential problems and prescribing the precise chemical elixirs needed to fix them. No need for a pharmacy. All you have to do is go outside; a drone delivery service would bring the solution directly to you.

These biosensor technologies – and the artificial intelligence networks governing their operation – could prevent any number of diseases. When these advances come to fruition, the healthcare system would undergo vast automation. In doing so, human beings would be to live beyond the risk of disease.