The Problem

Category: Health

A common issue amongst medical patients with prescribed medications is that they sometimes forget to take their pills or misremember whether they’ve already taken their pill.  This can result in unhealthy medical doses being administered.

 The Tech

Proteus Digital Health has invented a microscopic edible sensor that attaches to pills.  Once the oral pill is swallowed and enters a human’s stomach, it interacts with gastric juices.  This interaction triggers a signal being sent to a wearable patch.

The patch logs the date and time of the signal (which correlates with the digestion of the pill) and some other basic health information that can be transmitted to a mobile device via Bluetooth.

The FDA approved this sensor being attached to Abilify – a long-standing schizophrenia drug – with the new name of Abilify MyCite.  Despite the approval, this new pill is being criticized for its pairing with a drug taken by people already prone to paranoia, hallucinations, delusions, and hearing voices.

Article Title: Experts raise eyebrows at digital pill to monitor patients with schizophrenia
Website: Ars Technica
Link: https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/11/experts-raise-eyebrows-at-digital-pill-to-monitor-patients-with-schizophrenia/

 The Stakeholders Using The Tech

Medical patients with schizophrenia

Clinical trial participants

Doctors prescribing the pills

Pharmacists fulfilling prescription orders

Friends/Family/Doctors monitoring a loved one’s health

FDA

App Developers

The First Three Steps

1. There’s still work left to be done despite expectations of the new pill hitting the market next year.  First, the Abilify MyCite team needs to ease the public’s concerns around the sensor potentially amplifying Abilify patients’ side effects (i.e. hallucinations & delusions).
2. They should immediately continue conducting testing and gather data that supports the sensor does in fact increase a patients’ likelihood to remain on their prescribed pill-taking schedule.
3. They should promote their insights to families and doctors of patients with schizophrenia in order to gain public trust and build up demand for the product.

UNI: gm2778

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Comment on Compostable Diapers

“It can take 50-150 days for the diapers to break down – that’s a lot of used diapers on hand at any given time.  Furthermore, you need proper ratios of greens (i.e. grass clippings) to browns (i.e. dried leaves) to help compost the diaper.  I’m skeptical that parents will try this if their own baby’s natural browns can’t be composted, as the article suggests (“do not compost poopy disposable inserts”).”