First Digital Pill Approved to Worries about Biomedical “Big Brother”

Megalith

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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.

Ameet Sarpatwari, an instructor in medicine at Harvard Medical School, said the digital pill “has the potential to improve public health,” especially for patients who want to take their medication but forget. 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.
 
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It would be useful if these could give some real-time health data, but of course there's plenty of potential for this to go to hell somehow.
 
Id love for my dr. To ask me about this so i could tell him to dive off a cliff
 
In all seriousness, this would be fantastic for folks with severe mental illness who often refuse or forget to take their meds. Of course, only with a court order or whatnot.
 
In all seriousness, this would be fantastic for folks with severe mental illness who often refuse or forget to take their meds. Of course, only with a court order or whatnot.
They already have that. It's called invega trinza or something... They inject the medication into the patient like once a year...
 
They already have that. It's called invega trinza or something... They inject the medication into the patient like once a year...

Looks like that medication is 4 times a year, and it's only for schizophrenia. Which is cool, but not quite the same.
 
Looks like that medication is 4 times a year, and it's only for schizophrenia. Which is cool, but not quite the same.
Hm I thought I read they have longer versions of that drug.
 
Maybe instead of using it to make sure people take their medicine, it could be included in opioids to make sure we know where they all are at all times. That would cut down on the over prescribing and trafficking that goes on. If you really need them, most would be willing to put up with the intrusion.
 
I was loosely involved with a project for a states medical system. They were going to give people a smart phone as long as they took their medicine. The reasoning? If you could get them to avoid an ER visit, it was far cheaper to give them a phone. The thinking was the medication would could prevent a heart attack/whatever.
My role would have been to develop an app in which they would be given reminders to take their medicine and I think they were going to inform the app when they did take it. No way to actually verify it with the system I was talking about. I guess you could NFC scan your intestines? When stomach acid dissolves a certain amount, the chip syncs with the phone? What could go wrong?
 
Maybe instead of using it to make sure people take their medicine, it could be included in opioids to make sure we know where they all are at all times. That would cut down on the over prescribing and trafficking that goes on. If you really need them, most would be willing to put up with the intrusion.
Until people get wise and start cutting out the chip portion. That doesn't even consider the illegal pill manufacturing/sales coming from other countries (obviously, without chips).
 
What the fuck? So the solution to "people not taking their medications as prescribed" is to monitor them to make sure they do?? And then what? Deny their insurance claims if they don't? I mean if you're simply trying to help your patient get better, that's one thing but I don't see how this accomplishes that, at all.
 
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