What is Medical Nanotechnology?

Medical nanotechnology is an emerging area that seeks to use microscopic robots, sensors, cameras or other devices to noninvasively diagnose, protect and treat patients from inside their own bodies, sometimes at the scale of individual cells. Much of this technology remains little more than science-fiction fantasy, but one medical nanotechnology that might reach fruition in the coming decade is the use of nanoscale particles to deliver drugs to specific sites within a patient's body.