Smart pills tell patients & their doctors if medication is being taken as prescribed

Swimmingdancer

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Smart pills tell patients & their doctors if medication is being taken as prescribed

[UK and USA]

Title: On sale, smart pill with 'edible microchip' that tells you and your doctor when the next dose is due
Authors: Jenny Hope; Claire Bates
Source: Daily Mail Online
Date: Jan 2012

Smart pills that tell patients and their doctors if medication is being taken properly are to go on sale in Britain.
Patients take their drugs along with an extra tablet embedded with a tiny edible sensor which sends back information to a receiver in the form of a patch worn on the shoulder or arm. This tracks when the drugs were taken and the dose. The information is downloaded to a computer or smartphone which can be accessed by the patient and their doctor... to check that the medication is being taken correctly.

...Lloyds-pharmacy has signed a deal with U.S.-based digital healthcare provider Proteus Biomedical to bring the system to Britain... from September [2012].

Read full article...


ARTICLE 2:

Title: FDA approves ingestible sensor that transmits patient data to doctors
Author: Michelle Castillo
Source: CBS News
Date: Aug 2012

The ingestible sensor, which was already been approved for use in Europe, can transmit information about the patient to medical professionals and help them customize care.
...The sensor... can be put inside a pill or other consumables... Once swallowed, the device transmits a signal to a patch... that can determine when the item was consumed, as well as other physiological and behavioral metrics...

"About half of all people don't take medications like they're supposed to," Eric Topol, director of the Scripps Translational Science Institute in La Jolla,California who is not affiliated with Proteus Digital Health, told Nature. "This device could be a solution to that problem..."

Read full article...
 
My thoughts: Why I think this is particularly interesting is that I could foresee this technology becoming commonplace, or perhaps even mandatory for controlled substances, at some point in the future. It has interesting implications for those who would use prescribed meds in ways other than directed.
 
Fuck that! Mexican drug cartels seein dollar signs! Cha ching!

Find something better to do with your time assholes!

Big Brother is here!
 
They're gonna make people prescribed to opioids wear a monitoring device like home confinement?!
"It's all to help us provide you with better care Mrs. Jones!"

Fuck you!

Of course, they're gonna punish the patients/customers in legitmate pain for this whole, "prescription drug epidemic"!

The corporations who created the whole problem by irresponsibly creating these incredibly addictive preparations, like, "Purdue Pharma", well, they're just gonna make more money!! Because, if you used OCs responsibly, you would never have gotten addicted!
Yeah, okay!

Fucking bullshit!
 
Last edited:
BlueHues said:
Big Brother is here!
Click to expand...
Yeah, I don't want any chips in my body for whatever reason.

BlueHues said:
They're gonna make people prescribed to opioids wear a monitoring device like home confinement?!
"It's all to help us provide you with better care Mrs. Jones!"

Fuck you!
Click to expand...

Well for now it's voluntary and only in the early stages. But they are promoting it like "it'll help forgetful people remember to take their meds" and that it will make life easier and safer and enable doctors to give better care etc. If it ends up eventually being used as an abuse-deterrent, to report whether people are taking additional drugs, or to catch people out for not taking their meds as prescribed ("I'm lowering your dose because you haven't been taking them all" etc), I think that will just encourage the black market for drugs. And of course people would probably find ways to get around it (not sure exactly how that would work at this point, don't know enough about how the chip works). I just don't like the whole idea.

tackyspiral said:
It must be astronomically expensive?
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Yeah, it's very expensive right now because it's so new, but once it becomes more wide-spread it will get a lot cheaper and the claim is that it will save money because there are a huge number of unused, unaccounted-for or diverted pills, and that it will save on health-care costs etc. Could eventually see the cost being supported by insurance providers or governments, etc.
 
More info from their website:

The Proteus Digital Health™ Feedback System

Integrating wearable and ingestible sensor technologies to detect your medication intake and physiologic data, our digital health feedback system stores information in a secure database accessible from a variety of devices. By correlating objective data and providing actionable insights, you can take control and better manage your health, communicating with caregivers and clinicians to optimize treatment and stay well, all powered by you.

The ingestible sensor is technology you swallow, integrated into the medications you take and the products you use. The sensor resembles a grain of sand in size and make-up—measuring 1mm square and made mostly of silicon. The sensor records the exact time your medication is taken, as well as the unique identity of that medication. Besides communicating with the ingestible sensor, the patch records heart rate, temperature, activity and rest patterns. The cost will depend on the context in which the system is being used. At this time, consumers pay for our products, but we believe insurance companies and government payers will adopt the system in the near future.

Digital Medicines are the same pharmaceuticals you take today, with one small change: each pill also contains a tiny sensor that can communicate, via our digital health feedback system, vital information about your medication-taking behaviors and how your body is responding.

As a result, you can be sure you’re taking your medicines as prescribed, while at the same time receiving unprecedented feedback on your physical response to treatment. This offers a path to improved health. Currently, over 50% of us don’t get full benefit from the pharmaceuticals we use, because we take the wrong dose or inconsistently follow our prescriptions. The information from Digital Medicines can help you manage better each and every day, and you can share this information with family members, clinicians and other carer givers, allowing for better informed treatment decisions.
Click to expand...

They make it sound so rosy 8)
 
Can you say "Trojan Horse"?....Go do something productive with your life, fucking corporate drug whores!

"With the money we make off these monitoring systems, it should more than compensate for THE BILLIONS WE MADE FROM DIVERTED MEDICATIONS!"
-Random corporate drug dealer
 
I feel like if they really want this to work though they will have to be able to do it without the subject wearing this patch thingy
it would be to easy to disable it seems
 
We had a story similar to this posted here a while ago and the pharmaceutical company asked us to take it down because of inaccuracies by the writer. The company was claiming that the paranoia was unfounded because the technology was intended to prevent theft, not track patient behavior. I wonder if this is the same product.
 
tackyspiral said:
I feel like if they really want this to work though they will have to be able to do it without the subject wearing this patch thingy it would be to easy to disable it seems
Click to expand...

Yes, it would have to become something that was mandatory, like if you don't wear your patch you don't get your next Rx. Of course this is all just speculation about the ways this technology could potentially be used sometime in the future, right now it is completely voluntary, and you can apparently choose whether or not the info gets sent to your doctor.

23536 said:
We had a story similar to this posted here a while ago and the pharmaceutical company asked us to take it down because of inaccuracies by the writer. The company was claiming that the paranoia was unfounded because the technology was intended to prevent theft, not track patient behavior. I wonder if this is the same product.
Click to expand...

Do you mean inaccuracies by the author of the original article, or by a BL poster?

It doesn't sound like the same one. This technology is designed to track patient behaviour - primarily when the drug is taken - and it doesn't sound like their specific products could be used to prevent/track theft (nor is that a listed use anywhere on their website).

There are RFID microchips embedded in drug packaging to control inventory and prevent theft, perhaps it was one of those products?

I'm sure the makers would say we are just being paranoid and claim that the intention of their product is not for it to be used to penalize non-compliance or catch people misusing their meds, people are currently under no obligation to use this product, and you currently get to choose who the data is shared with, etc. And the articles I quoted did not make any statements about the potentially disturbing possibilities for how this technology could be used - that's just me ;)
 
Okay, I'm sorry, this is for diabetes meds and what not?.....
The implications are definitely more ominous however....
Sorry
 
This is some Orwellian shit right here. No way I'd let anyone put a microchip in my stomach :|
 
Swimmingdancer said:
Do you mean inaccuracies by the author of the original article, or by a BL poster?

It doesn't sound like the same one. This technology is designed to track patient behaviour - primarily when the drug is taken - and it doesn't sound like their specific products could be used to prevent/track theft (nor is that a listed use anywhere on their website).

There are RFID microchips embedded in drug packaging to control inventory and prevent theft, perhaps it was one of those products?

I'm sure the makers would say we are just being paranoid and claim that the intention of their product is not for it to be used to penalize non-compliance or catch people misusing their meds, people are currently under no obligation to use this product, and you currently get to choose who the data is shared with, etc. And the articles I quoted did not make any statements about the potentially disturbing possibilities for how this technology could be used - that's just me ;)
Click to expand...

It was an article that the company claimed to be libelous. Every individual dose was trackable, and the article's author inferred that the technology would be used to track patients.

That now seems to be the explicit intention of this product--at least in Europe.
 
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