Swallowing Your Medicine

There is an interesting article in this week's Economist  about smart pills - intelligent, ingestible devices which can can relay data to other devices outside the body, and thus onwards to medical practitioners. Eventually all pills and capsules might be tracked this way.(http://www.economist.com/businessfinance/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15276730, subscription may be required).

The pill technology has been thoroughly developed, but it looks like the budget for the receiver device was sacrificed (see left).  Photo: aeu04117

On a serious note, this stuff could be a step forward. It is thought that at least a third of prescription drugs are not taken correctly, or at all.  This leads to revenue losses for drug companies but also, more importantly, to sub-optimal treatment for the patient. Any device that can aid timely administration of medicines should help to improve treatment outcomes and thus lower healthcare costs overall.

Positive benefits:
Closer medical supervision; better patient compliance with dosage regimens; easier identification of adverse events

Negatives:
Potential for privacy intrusion; repeated texts and emails from MegaCorp/your doctor/your mother, asking you why you haven't taken your dose of PanaceaRx today.

One of the applications mentioned in the article is a service launched by a telco in Mexico which allows customers to determine whether they have influenza by using their mobile phone. Barring any eye-watering iPhone rectal thermometer app, I 'm not sure how this works.  Having had H1N1 flu this summer, I can confirm that a four dollar digital thermometer (sub-lingual) is all you need.