Smart pills can tell your doctor you took them
We have many types of pills available these days to treat all sorts of different ailments. Of course, the problem with pills is that they don't work if you don't take them. Worse still, for some medications, missing a dose can lead to all sorts of unwanted withdrawal effects and delay a patient's treatment.
Smart pills aim to solve this problem with a simple monitoring solution that can tell when a patient has taken their medication. They are now publicly available and authorized for use. So let's see how they work.
The development of the smart pill is largely a product of miniaturization. Modern electronics have advanced to the point where tiny sensors can be created in a size small enough to fit into a single pill.
Proteus Digital Health developed the Abilify MyCite system with Otsaka America Pharmaceutical. Proteus later went bankrupt, but also developed smart pill solutions to treat other illnesses like TB Credit: Proteus.com via Internet Archive ED NOTE: Hard to find photos, is a screenshot of the company's now defunct site acceptable?< /figure>Perhaps the best known example is the drug known as Abilify MyCite, approved by the FDA in 2017. It is a treatment that consists of an aripiprazole tablet with a sensor included which helps determine when a patient has taken the pill.The mechanism of action is ingenious.A tiny CMOS circuit is placed in the pill, along with a cellu the primitive battery. The battery cell is made of magnesium and copper chloride. It activates and releases its energy when the pill is in the presence of stomach acid, powering the CMOS circuit which sends a low power modulated signal at a frequency between 10 and 30 KHz, at the rate of approximately two packets per second . The signal is then picked up by a patch worn on the body, which pings a paired smartphone or tablet via standard Bluetooth. The components that make up the sensor are either harmlessly processed by the body or discarded as waste, with the sensor itself being about the size of a grain of sand.
The system allows a smartphone to log in when the patient takes a pill, update patient records, and share them with medical staff. It also allows reminders to be sent if the patient forgets a dose, for example. By keeping an automatic diary, the system can help patients who may have problems remembering to take their medications. It can also quickly alert doctors in the event that a patient misses their regular doses.
In the case of the Abilify MyCite pill, the drug involved is an apyptic antipsychotic technically called aripiprazole. It is primarily used as a treatment for conditions such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and obsessive-compulsive disorder. It is a drug that can have negative withdrawal effects. The conditions it is intended to treat are also ones that often come with problems related to forgetting to take medication regularly. Thus, on paper, a system for monitoring patients taking such a drug would appear to be a formidable tool...
We have many types of pills available these days to treat all sorts of different ailments. Of course, the problem with pills is that they don't work if you don't take them. Worse still, for some medications, missing a dose can lead to all sorts of unwanted withdrawal effects and delay a patient's treatment.
Smart pills aim to solve this problem with a simple monitoring solution that can tell when a patient has taken their medication. They are now publicly available and authorized for use. So let's see how they work.
The development of the smart pill is largely a product of miniaturization. Modern electronics have advanced to the point where tiny sensors can be created in a size small enough to fit into a single pill.
Proteus Digital Health developed the Abilify MyCite system with Otsaka America Pharmaceutical. Proteus later went bankrupt, but also developed smart pill solutions to treat other illnesses like TB Credit: Proteus.com via Internet Archive ED NOTE: Hard to find photos, is a screenshot of the company's now defunct site acceptable?< /figure>Perhaps the best known example is the drug known as Abilify MyCite, approved by the FDA in 2017. It is a treatment that consists of an aripiprazole tablet with a sensor included which helps determine when a patient has taken the pill.The mechanism of action is ingenious.A tiny CMOS circuit is placed in the pill, along with a cellu the primitive battery. The battery cell is made of magnesium and copper chloride. It activates and releases its energy when the pill is in the presence of stomach acid, powering the CMOS circuit which sends a low power modulated signal at a frequency between 10 and 30 KHz, at the rate of approximately two packets per second . The signal is then picked up by a patch worn on the body, which pings a paired smartphone or tablet via standard Bluetooth. The components that make up the sensor are either harmlessly processed by the body or discarded as waste, with the sensor itself being about the size of a grain of sand.
The system allows a smartphone to log in when the patient takes a pill, update patient records, and share them with medical staff. It also allows reminders to be sent if the patient forgets a dose, for example. By keeping an automatic diary, the system can help patients who may have problems remembering to take their medications. It can also quickly alert doctors in the event that a patient misses their regular doses.
In the case of the Abilify MyCite pill, the drug involved is an apyptic antipsychotic technically called aripiprazole. It is primarily used as a treatment for conditions such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and obsessive-compulsive disorder. It is a drug that can have negative withdrawal effects. The conditions it is intended to treat are also ones that often come with problems related to forgetting to take medication regularly. Thus, on paper, a system for monitoring patients taking such a drug would appear to be a formidable tool...
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