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Pills With Digestible Microchips Approved By US Drug Agency

Posted by Soulskill on from the tastes-like-chicken dept.

ananyo writes "Digestible microchips embedded in drugs may soon tell doctors whether a patient is taking their medications as prescribed. The 'digital pills' are the first ingestible devices approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The pills contain a sand-particle sized sensor, consisting of a minute silicon chip containing trace amounts of magnesium and copper. When swallowed, it generates a slight voltage in response to digestive juices, which conveys a signal to the surface of a person's skin where a patch then relays the information to a mobile phone belonging to a healthcare-provider. Currently, the FDA, and the analogous regulatory agency in Europe have only approved the device based on studies showing its safety and efficacy when implanted in placebo pills. But Proteus Digital Health, the manufacturer, hopes to have the device approved within other drugs in the near future."

23 of 163 comments (clear)

  1. Am I the only one that finds this creepy? by crazyjj · · Score: 5, Insightful

    “About half of all people don’t take medications like they’re supposed to,” says Eric Topol, director of the Scripps Translational Science Institute in La Jolla,California. “This device could be a solution to that problem, so that doctors can know when to rev up a patient’s medication adherence.”

    You know, I kind of like the idea of deciding for myself what medication I take and when. The idea of my doctor trying to make me ingest a sensor like I'm some sort of medical prisoner is more than a little creepy to me. What's next, is he going to give me forced ball-shock treatments if I refuse to eat healthy?

    --
    What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
    1. Re:Am I the only one that finds this creepy? by Kenja · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The issue is that a doctor cant treat you if you dont take your meds and patients often dont know if they have or not due to mental condition or as part of drugs side effects. This can be a major issue when you cant remember if you took the yellow pill today or not and taking another could kill you while skipping a day could cause a relapse of your condition. If on the other hand you dont want your doctor to treat you (as you indicate), then simply dont go to one.

      --

      "Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
    2. Re:Am I the only one that finds this creepy? by NFN_NLN · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You know, I kind of like the idea of deciding for myself what medication I take and when. The idea of my doctor trying to make me ingest a sensor like I'm some sort of medical prisoner is more than a little creepy to me. What's next, is he going to give me forced ball-shock treatments if I refuse to eat healthy?

      You are exactly the reason we need devices like this. Either take the medication as prescribed OR don't take any medication. But stop selectively breeding resistant bacteria that impact EVERYONE else.

    3. Re:Am I the only one that finds this creepy? by ganjadude · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I see this as more of a way to check if people are abusing drugs under the disguise of being good for the patient. take 2 pain killers instead of one? cops knock on your door. /tinfoil

      --
      have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
    4. Re:Am I the only one that finds this creepy? by h4rr4r · · Score: 4, Informative

      I would love this. Not taking my medicine leaves me in a state where I forget to take my medicine. I have my phone set to alert me to take it. This would be a big help.

    5. Re:Am I the only one that finds this creepy? by Dunbal · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Yeah, vets have absolutely nothing to do with bacterial resistance. I mean, those chickens need to be treated with vancomycin - absolutely all of them, as a preventative measure. Surely that has much less impact on bacterial resistance than Grand-pa who forgot to complete his pills for pseudo-membranous colitis because he felt better after a day.

      --
      Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
    6. Re:Am I the only one that finds this creepy? by Flaming+Babies · · Score: 2

      “About half of all people don’t take medications like they’re supposed to,” says Eric Topol, director of the Scripps Translational Science Institute in La Jolla,California. “This device could be a solution to that problem, so that doctors can know when to rev up a patient’s medication adherence.”

      You know, I kind of like the idea of deciding for myself what medication I take and when. The idea of my doctor trying to make me ingest a sensor like I'm some sort of medical prisoner is more than a little creepy to me. What's next, is he going to give me forced ball-shock treatments if I refuse to eat healthy?

      Trust your doctor or don't. I pay mine because I value his knowledge. The dosage he recommends is what I take. (It's not uncommon for that recommendation to be 'as needed') I think this is a silly idea...and based more on preventing the sharing/selling of medication, but I don't think there's anything creepy medically about it.

      --
      The right to be heard does not automatically include the right to be taken seriously.
    7. Re:Am I the only one that finds this creepy? by fm6 · · Score: 2

      I think your doctor needs to know whether you're taking your pills. When he asks, "Are you taking your pills?" do you answer "none of your business"? If you don't trust your doctor with that level of information, why even see him?

      And for many patients, it's not even a privacy issue. Older patients with memory problems, for example.

    8. Re:Am I the only one that finds this creepy? by Jawnn · · Score: 2

      You know, I kind of like the idea of deciding for myself what medication I take and when. The idea of my doctor trying to make me ingest a sensor like I'm some sort of medical prisoner is more than a little creepy to me.

      You should wish that it was only your doctor keeping tabs on your compliance with his prescribed regimen. The real consumer for this data will be your insurance carrier. "Failure to comply" with prescribed treatment is grounds for termination of benefits.

    9. Re:Am I the only one that finds this creepy? by Lurker2288 · · Score: 2

      To be fair, there are plenty of medications a person might choose not to take as prescribed apart from antibiotics, but on the whole I agree with you. If there is some reason why you can't or aren't willing to take your medication as prescribed, then you should speak to your doctor about that and identify a course of treatment you are willing to comply with. Nonadherence to prescriptions is a major source of reduction in patient well-being and a drive of increased healthcare costs. If a simple technological solution to that is available, why not use it?

    10. Re:Am I the only one that finds this creepy? by Penurious+Penguin · · Score: 2

      So then, I hope you are only advocating the use of these chips exclusively in antibiotics, no? I might be able to remain civil if that's the case, but otherwise, you're mad. I'm just so sure that every Doctor who's ever prescribed Prozac or Ritalin to a child chose the perfect, ideal dose! Your methods should work great with pain-killers too. Yeah. Well, I sincerely hope you get a prescription for a strong laxative someday, someday when fascism has finally overtaken America and meds are no longer optional.

      --
      Forward! -- Emperor Norton, 2012
    11. Re:Am I the only one that finds this creepy? by daenris · · Score: 2

      I wish there was a mod crazy option. You really think that any and every pharmacy that a person might get their prescription filled at -- most of which are commercial entities without ties to a hospital -- are going to individually put serial numbers on pills that link them to the person getting the prescription filled? I'll give you a hint, I've worked at a pharmacy and they definitely do not do this. Let alone track fingerprints. There is a bottle filled with pain killers on the shelf. When a prescription comes in, the pharmacist or pharmacy tech grabs that bottle, and counts out the number of pills prescribed into a new bottle, which is given to the customer.

      Now the pills might contain a serial number that ties them back to a specific batch, which would tie them to a pharmacy and they could pull up a log of customers who had prescriptions filled from that batch and narrow it down reasonably well (even to 1 person if that person was the only one who got a prescription filled from that batch) but there is no guarantee that it can be narrowed down to 1 specific person as there is no individual tracking information on the pills.

    12. Re:Am I the only one that finds this creepy? by mcgrew · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Prior to Carter, the mentally ill were basically tucked away out of sight in asylums. Then they invented effective anti-psychotic medication, and so it became possible to treat the mentally ill. Of course, a treated mentally ill person does not need to be tucked away in an asylum anymore, so they were released... and a significant portion stopped taking their medication.

      Either your history is faulty, or my memory is. Reagan is the one who freed the nutballs, and it was before many of the modern tretments came about, but long after Haldol (invented in 1958), a treatment for schitzophrenia and psychosis.

      When they let the crazies out, they weren't treating them! I knew one such fellow with schitzophrenia, crazy as a loon, unable to hold a job or have any kind of normal life, on drugs, and lived on the government dole. He finally got treatment (Haldol), and the last time I saw him he had a job, a girlfriend, had given up the drugs (many mentally ill people are on illegal drugs because if their illnesses, and the medical community insists that the drugs cause the illness) and was an election judge!

      Note that Haldol is injected once a month, the patient does not medicate himself.

      We treat the mentally ill badly in this country. Very badly. I know one woman who had an incredibly bad childhood, had clinical depression since her teen years, started on drugs as a young adult, and her "treatment" always consisted of putting her in a drug treatment facility, again on the stupid assumption that the drugs caused her illness, rather than the other way around, despite the fact that the illness came first! She finally got some good help, is now on Paxil and off the illegal drugs. But those two are the exceptions to the rule, most mentally ill people get no help whatever.

      Thise homeless bugging you for spare change? Most of them have mental problems and could be useful members of society if they had access to treatment.

      --
      Free Martian Whores!
    13. Re:Am I the only one that finds this creepy? by CheshireDragon · · Score: 2

      I usually get hydrocodones(10/325) to be exact for when my kidney decides to develop stones and then another bottle after the Lithotripsy procedure. A couple other times when I had some teeth pulled. I also currently take Adderall(10mg) for my ADHD. The ONLY thing that the pharmacist does, since they are controlled substances, is write down my name, address and the time they were picked up on some log sheet. I can only assume that the log they have is for some kind of tracking purpose. Any other ideas? I know they are not going to come to my door and and ask if I have been taking them properly. IF I OD and die they can trace it back to the pharmacy, then the DR, and ask if I was prescribed them or if I forged the script. After that I am on to a statistical database...

      --
      "That's right...I said it."
  2. False Negative? by NFN_NLN · · Score: 5, Interesting

    So what happens when there is a false negative?

    Dr: Did you take your pill?
    P: Yes
    Dr: The pill didn't register; are you sure you didn't forget? You better take another one.

    1. Re:False Negative? by Antony+T+Curtis · · Score: 2

      I can see you're really upset about this. I honestly think you ought to sit down calmly, take a stress pill and think things over.

      --
      No sig. Move along - nothing to see here.
  3. Micro chips or RFID tags? by Kenja · · Score: 2

    Doesn't sound like they're talking about microchips in the manor many of us would assume when hearing the phrase ""digestible microchips". These sound more like RFID chips that derive their power from stomach acid rather then radio signals.

    --

    "Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
  4. Uh oh by Antipater · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Next they'll be creating "parent-friendly" vegetables that tell you when your kid is slipping them to the dog under the table.

    --
    Everything is better with chainsaws.
  5. Mom! I Swallowed A Microchip! by Jeremiah+Cornelius · · Score: 5, Funny

    I used to have a stomach virus, but now I have a COMPUTER VIRUS! :-)

    --
    "Flyin' in just a sweet place,
    Never been known to fail..."
  6. Definitely can be helpful under right conditions by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    As someone who has an elderly parent who does not take her medication properly and then fibs to the doctor, this would be very helpful. Also, for patients with memory issues, also very helpful. As long as it is an optional item, I don't see anything wrong with this. If you don't wish for the medication to be monitored, then that's something that should be your choice. I would also think the more delicate or severe the problem being addressed, the more it should be suggested and used. My grandmother would forget her medication and take it too much, causing extremely low blood pressure, and this could have helped.

  7. Wi-Fi by ThatsNotPudding · · Score: 2

    Take enough of these, and we finally will be susceptable to Wi-Fi fields!

  8. Re:Science Marches On by mcgrew · · Score: 2

    I have an eye implant powered by my eye's focusing muscles. I'm 60 and have better than 20/20 vision at all distances! Science (and technology) do indeed march on. BTW, my implant is the favorite of all devices I own; I used to be 20/400 before the implant.

    And the tricorders are coming closer and closer as welll. Now if they'd invent a matter replicator...

    --
    Free Martian Whores!
  9. Pink Floyd Reference by trevc · · Score: 2

    If you don't eat your meds, you can't have any pudding!