Bedford, Massachusetts-based MicroCHIPS recently announced another $16.5 million in venture capital. The company is developing an implantable medical device that will deliver drugs inside the body. This third round of funding brings the company's total funding to just north of $70 million, according to the company. InterWest Partners joined previous investors Polaris Venture Partners, Flybridge Capital Partners, Novartis and Medtronic.

MicroCHIPS spun of out MIT more than ten years ago. The company aims to enable patients and clinicians to monitor and control implanted drug dispensing chips via wireless technology. MicroCHIPs said the funding will go toward its first human trials of the devices. These trials will focus on patients with diabetes and osteoporosis.

According to a report over at Technology Review, some of the funding will also support a new joint venture that MicroCHIPS created with InterWest called On Demand Therapeutics, which is based in San Francisco.

Here's an excerpt from Technology Review:

"The diabetes trial will involve a MicroCHIPS device that can track glucose levels in the blood -- no needle-pokes required -- and report the data wirelessly to a handheld monitor. It'll be able to operate for about a year. The osteoporosis trial will deliver parathyroid hormone to the spine, to help grow new bone. In both trials, the MicroCHIPS device will be implanted in an outpatient procedure, using local anesthetic. Eventually, Santini says, the company hopes to test devices that combine sensing capability with the ability to deliver doses of a drug, but for now those functions are separate."

Read the full report from TR here