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FDA Approves Digital Pill That Tracks If Patients Have Ingested Their Medication (nytimes.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times (Warning: source may be paywalled; alternative source): For the first time, the Food and Drug Administration has approved a digital pill -- a medication embedded with a sensor that can tell doctors whether, and when, patients take their medicine. The approval, announced late on Monday, marks a significant advance in the growing field of digital devices designed to monitor medicine-taking and to address the expensive, longstanding problem that millions of patients do not take drugs as prescribed. Experts estimate that so-called nonadherence or noncompliance to medication costs about $100 billion a year, much of it because patients get sicker and need additional treatment or hospitalization. Patients who agree to take the digital medication, a version of the antipsychotic Abilify, can sign consent forms allowing their doctors and up to four other people, including family members, to receive electronic data showing the date and time pills are ingested. A smartphone app will let them block recipients anytime they change their mind. Although voluntary, the technology is still likely to prompt questions about privacy and whether patients might feel pressure to take medication in a form their doctors can monitor.
I think the "digital" logo on this story isn't quite what you think it's for.
I can just see people deciding to now empty their pills into a bowl and microwaving on high for a few minutes. That should fry whatever tattletale device they are tainted with.
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I have a CPAP, I already have to submit an SD card to them routinely to continue getting the insurance to cover medical supplies. Guess what's next?
Nurse Google will love this: yet another set of really personal data to be mined and exploited for new and innovative ways of raping your privacy.
Because you can bet your ass the exploitation of the pill tracking data will be outsourced to the private sector...
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
So, this is a pill you take to monitor whether you've taken your other pills, yes? How long does it remain in position to monitor the other pills? do you clean off this pill and retake in once it leaves your system? (Gross. :-)
If you're having trouble remembering to take your other pills why would you remember to take this one? The questions just go on. :-)
Because sometimes doctors give you medications that are for a condition that they suspect you might or might not have. Then when you get that little cardboard box with the pills and safety manual listing possible side effects, you might have second thoughts. Example is Xarelto, a blood thinner, with various risks such as bleeding into the brain, swelling of limbs, reduced red blood cell count, fever etc...
When someone says, "Any fool can see