Slashdot Mirror
A Smart Pillbox To Improve Medication Compliance
Roland Piquepaille writes "A major challenge in public health is that people do not take their medications, a phenomenon known as 'medication non-adherence.' In the US alone, it is estimated that this accounts for 10% of all hospital visits and costs the healthcare system $100 billion per year and $60 billion to the pharmaceutical industry. Now, an MIT research team thinks it has a solution to this problem that will save lives worldwide. They've developed the uBox, a convenient, palm-sized, intelligent pill dispenser, 'which reminds a patient when it is time to take his medication, records when a patient has taken a dose, and prevents a patient from double-dosing.' The first large-scale trial with 100 uBoxes is scheduled to begin in May in Bihar, India, in a 6-month long tuberculosis treatment program."
And how does the pillbox know that you actually took the pill, as opposed to taking it out of the pillbox so that it will quit nagging you?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Why uBox? They should call it the iBox and everybody would buy one.
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
"...costs the healthcare system $100 billion per year and $60 billion to the pharmaceutical industry"
Did they want to say brings ?
My grandmother is going into assisted living this week, and up until now, I've had to nag her twice a day to take her pills. They'll administer her meds, but it's $21/day.
Haida Manga
I can imagine this will only be made available to third-world patients. The liability lawsuits arising out of things like battery failure on the unit in the medical/legal minefield of the USA don't bear thinking about.
"I bless every day that I continue to live, for every day is pure profit."
But there's times when I think some people just don't deserve the benefits of modern healthcare. It's just amazing how common a situation it is for people to have a deadly illness and simply stop taking their medication. It's pretty rare for them to even know the actual name of the drug, or anything about how it works. I almost died when I was just a kid, and even at that age I learned the hell out of the drugs I was on. And I certainly learned to check my watch, or at least just set an alarm. I wouldn't have cut myself any slack for not doing so at 11, and I wouldn't for any adult not suffering from a mental disorder.
Everything will be taken away from you.
How is this different then those 25 cent plastic pill boxes that have compartments for all your drugs, all nicely labeled and sorted for each day? They easily show you what you need to take, and if you missed anything. No batteries either!
If we cant make it an 'i-something or other' and give it an IP address its of no value? Sure, technology has its place, but sometimes just common sense is all that is needed. When a hammer is all you need, bring a hammer, don't re-invent it just for the sake of inventing.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Usually not, and in any case it can be a long time before anybody realises what the problem actually is, by which time damage may have been done. Also over medicating, or taking pills at the wrong frequency is also a major problem that this thing is trying to address.
Having said that, I don't think a hi-tech solution like this is a necessary answer for most people. We'd go a long way towards preventing these problems simply by printing readable labels on med boxes that are easily distinguishable for people with visual impairments or slight memory problems.
How is this better than the already-in-trials Cypak box, which also reminds the patient to take the pills, registers the time/date taken per pill, transfers results over RFID to doctors, etc, has the added advantage of looking exactly like an ordinary pharma blister pack?
The problem with this is not an issue of people needing to be reminded of the doses they've taken, or should take. The biggest issue I see is WILLFUL non-compliance with a doctors advice. Now granted, doctors are only human as well so they can make mistakes but the number of people I hear tell me that "oh well i have a pill for this, but i do not take it" because they think they know more than the doctor (which sadly is SOMETIMES the case when one looks at it in a 'knows more about this situation' issue).
..., n(st|th|rd) opinions are for. Self diagnosis is about as reliable as the Mitch Hedburg round-about aids test if you have no background in biochem.
This mentality is a lot more prevalent than I would have thought prior to working in travel medical insurances. The number of people who would get angry because we had to count them as treating a condition because they had a specific prescription on their history but they refused to take it was staggering. Somehow, it then becomes our fault that they have an exclusion because they were not complying with the prescribed treatment.
To get Dickens on it: Given that non-compliance is generating these costs, i'm guessing its also generating casualties, which means the tendancy will eventually be minimized across the gene pool.
Wish that helped my generations health costs though.
Protips: If you disagree with your doctor, that is what second, third,
Ice Cream has no bones.
Based on my understanding of US law, carying a controlled substance (anything that requires a prescription) in anything other that the official bottle it came in is a federal crime. All such daily and weekly pillboxes are illegal. My father was stopped and threatened with arrest when one such item was disovered, he had to rummage through his cary on luggage to find enough pill bottles with appropriate names and descriptions such that they let him through (though they noted that just having them out of the appropriate container was illegal). How do such pill boxes deal with the legal issues? If you take one on a trip and don't bring the bottle with the appropriate documentation, should you be subject to arrest?
Learn to love Alaska
If you are being treated for Parkinson's disease, it will give you another pill. If you are being treated for Alzheimer's, it will beep to remind you.
Oh yeah, that's not doomed to failure!
The batteries will never run out, the thing will never be badly programmed, the patient will never ignore it, nor forget it, and the workers checking up on them will always be diligent and honest. That's why it's gonna work!
You can't take the sky from me...
Because we don't know what is best. MDs are hardly infallible, can't always be on the spot, and are under enormous pressure to overmedicate. Sell more pills that way, and keeps them covered in case of a lawsuit. We still have much to learn about medication. For instance, grapefruit magnifies the power of a great deal of medicine. It is quite possible for half the dosage with grapefruit to be as good as a full dose without.
I'm wondering if the pharmaceutical industry's "losses" are because people aren't buying what they aren't taking.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
when did the medical community begin using military terminology like "medicinal non-compliance?"
I'd use this. I have ADD, and one of my problems is paying enough attention to take the meds at the right time. Years ago I actually wrote software for the Apple Newton to help me solve that problem. (Huh, I wonder how hard it'll be to port it to the iPhone? Dev kit comes out soon, right?)
Anyhow. Yeah. I'd actually use this.
Yeah, they stop when they feel better. If there was ever a need for a public information campaign this is it.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
...about this not being a solution for the multitudes of people who simply choose not to take their medications, but that's not the only goal of a system like this. It could go a long way towards helping people keep up with their doses. My mom died at 45 because one of the medications she was on gave her memory issues and one day she overdosed because she simply couldn't remember that she had already taken the drugs. If this helps anyone avoid that fate, it will be successful in my opinion.