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

[Swimmingdancer]

Okay, I'm sorry, this is for diabetes meds and what not?.....
The implications are definitely more ominous however....
Sorry

It is for any type of medication, it's just a very new technology that only recently became approved for use. Diabetes medication is just one of the small number of drugs they've listed as examples under "Medicines we are working on" on their website if that's what you were referring to; they are apparently doing trials on a variety of drugs. As far as I understand, the current version of the technology approved for the UK and US is just the chip/sensor, the patch and the computer infrastructure, I think they still have to get it approved for use inside the actual drug. I think the only one that is actually on the market (supposedly - according to news reports, I'm not positive if they are actually in UK pharmacies yet) so far is a placebo pill that contains the chip that you voluntarily take at the same time as you take your drug (any drug). The goal and capability is to put it inside any pill. So it's not (AFAIK) currently being used in any creepy ways, it's just the implications of this technology and how it can be used in the future that are creepy IMO.

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.

Hmm... It must not be the same product . This company clearly states their product is for tracking the exact time each pill was consumed.

Was that product actually consumable? I've heard of microchips on the packaging of individually packaged doses of medication (which can be traced the the patient and pharmacy if they are sold/stolen and the packages found, or can set off store alarms if someone tried to remve them from the store), like on Suboxone film - the film strips themselves don't contain chips, just the package does. I have some vague recollection of that perhaps being on DITM.

Those types of chips are already widely used on an array of packaging, I have set off drug store alarms before because they forgot to deactivate the chip.

Such an invention would almost seem to indicate drug testing is not accurate whatsoever, am I wrong? lol

I don't understand, please elaborate?

Their press releases are kind of vague. They say things like, "Once the ingestible sensor reaches the stomach, it is powered by contact with stomach fluid and communicates a unique signal that determines identity and timing of ingestion." I think they just mean that if patients are taking multiple drugs each drug would have a different sensor identity, not that the current technology could actually tell what drugs someone has ingested in and of itself. The main purpose right now is to record the exact time that each pill was taken.

 

[MemphisX3]

Dude fuck that!

 

[23536]

Hmm... It must not be the same product . This company clearly states their product is for tracking the exact time each pill was consumed.

Was that product actually consumable? I've heard of microchips on the packaging of individually packaged doses of medication (which can be traced the the patient and pharmacy if they are sold/stolen and the packages found, or can set off store alarms if someone tried to remve them from the store), like on Suboxone film - the film strips themselves don't contain chips, just the package does. I have some vague recollection of that perhaps being on DITM.

Those types of chips are already widely used on an array of packaging, I have set off drug store alarms before because they forgot to deactivate the chip.

I found the old thread; it's not the same product. It was consumable though.

I think I said too much earlier; I thought they had protested publicly, but it was quieter than that.

 

[qwe]

i can see where these smart pills could be very useful. but i think, overall, it's going to erode trust between the healthcare system and patients.

Such an invention would almost seem to indicate drug testing is not accurate whatsoever, am I wrong? lol

i'm waiting for society to catch up with this fact. i once tested positive for cocaine in my urine, and i hadn't used any sort of stimulant. the clinic staff didn't look like they believed me, but there was nothing they could do... the science isn't exactly on their side with drug tests.

at least they're not as bad as drug sniffing dogs... but that's a different topic...

 

[MyDoorsAreOpen]

If this technology is perfected and the process becomes cheap, it'll inevitably be ubiquitous in prescription pills. However, I can see patients pushing for legal restrictions on who has access to the data about the pills they've taken.

From the other side of the desk, I groan about this because it just means more reams of information to keep track of. And to what end? Patients either care about taking care of themselves, or they don't. Certainly me saying "I looked at your pill transmitter log, and you haven't taken your antihypertensive since June", and then threatening them with stopping the drug, or anything really, isn't going to get them more compliant.

I'm not seeing these big savings for either big pharm or healthcare providers. It's doubtless an expensive bit of R&D from the outset, what with all the testing and animal and clinical trials that national governments demand. Then there's the mass manufacture. There's also the additional infrastructure and man-hours needed to collect and manage all the data on all the pills out there. All for the doc being able to say "Hey big pharmer, stop the metformin machine, because Wilmer Rodgriguez Jr. didn't take his metformin this month, and I'm not giving him any more, so I just saved the system a whole lot of waste"?? Come on!

No, what I see coming of this is really two applications. The first is for a separate and more expensive class of drugs (compare 'extended release') of many medications that are far less efficacious when taken wrong, and frequently are taken wrong. Patients who had trouble complying but really wanted to be compliant could opt in, for a little extra coin. The second, of course, is monitoring of patients scripted controlled substances. The thing is, most chronic pain patients treated with opiaties are already given pain contracts by their doctors these days, which usually include random drug tests and pill counts. It's not hard to tell who's keeping their contract and who isn't.

I don't see this affecting the black market for opiates, either for legitimate and unfortunately un- or undertreated pain or for recreational use, except in one ultimately trivial way. Diverted meds will need to be somehow deactivated soon after diversion, meaning that consumers won't have the option of consuming them orally in their whole form, and may not buy them that way either.

 

[pete+carl]

this could work out better for genuine pain patients by making it easier for doctors to prescribe high strength pain killers without fear of abuse/persecution and the doctor can track dosing of the pills and stop abuse far more easily

bad if you want to get high but good idea for genuine patients

 

[Swimmingdancer]

this could work out better for genuine pain patients by making it easier for doctors to prescribe high strength pain killers without fear of abuse/persecution and the doctor can track dosing of the pills and stop abuse far more easily

bad if you want to get high but good idea for genuine patients

I see it at being potentially problematic for legit pain patients too, because even if you're just using your meds for pain you don't always take them exactly as prescribed. Not to mention I just don't like sacrificing privacy and freedom on principle.

 

[BlueHues]

^Word
Who wants to wear a frickin arm band that gives off a radio signal...I mean it might be small but still...I guess you could track everyone through their phones anyway, if you really wanted

 

[Captain.Heroin]

i'm waiting for society to catch up with this fact. i once tested positive for cocaine in my urine, and i hadn't used any sort of stimulant. the clinic staff didn't look like they believed me, but there was nothing they could do... the science isn't exactly on their side with drug tests.

And this is exactly why I would refuse to take a drug test from a doctor - a false positive would most surely reduce my likelihood for getting actual medical help, and I'm not there to have someone try to investigate what substances I use; I go to doctors for medical help.

this could work out better for genuine pain patients by making it easier for doctors to prescribe high strength pain killers without fear of abuse/persecution and the doctor can track dosing of the pills and stop abuse far more easily

I actually don't think so. The technology will most likely backfire and not work as expected. There will also likely be people who can abuse the drugs still and have a sensor not detect it; whereas for other people, their usage may be detected as abuse when it's not.

There's too many individual differences in the way the human body interacts with drugs.

For instance, I had a friend who had a high concentration of a certain liver enzyme. He couldn't take oxycodone orally effectively, and if he did, he would take several hundred milligrams orally, and the effect wasn't as intense as it would have been for an average user.

Such a system would likely detect his usage of oxycodone as abuse for being metabolized much quicker than average (likely indicating IV usage) when really that wouldn't be the case at all.

And what if the technology simply fails to present the doctor exactly what he wants? Does the doctor use that as grounds not to prescribe you medicine you need?

For all of these reasons, I think it's bad for pain patients.

 

[BlueHues]

^I think all the technology does is let the doctor know when you took a certain medication and gives him a chart to look at to see if youre dosing too frequntly or not enough...

 

[Furry mouth]

Unless you know how this or similar technologies work I wouldn't knock them. They will serve a very useful purpose IMHO.
It's the way of the future, for crying out loud everything we do is already monitored and tracked.
8(