(by Giovanni Calcerano) The Food and Drug Administration, the US government body that deals with the regulation of food and pharmaceutical products, recently approved the use of the first digital pill that records whether or not patients have taken their medicines. The pill, called Abilify MyCite, features a small ingestible sensor that communicates with a patch worn by the patient. The patch, in turn, transmits the drug data to a smartphone app and, through this, the patient can decide whether to make this information visible to his doctor and other authorized persons.
The pill that contains the sensor is a modified version of the drug Abilify, used to treat depression, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. It is therefore a real medicine but, as mentioned, it has something more than the classic pill: by tracing the actual use of the substance, it meets the need to help you always take your own doses and reduce the problems related to incorrect medication intake. The pill was developed, through years of research, by the Japanese pharmaceutical company Otsuka and the digital medicine service Proteus Digital Health, which manufactures the sensor.
This sensor is nothing more than a miniaturized device, the size of a grain of sand, composed of silicon, copper and magnesium (safe elements also contained in food and eliminated via the intestine). When the sensor comes into contact with stomach acid, it generates an electrical signal that is picked up by the patch which, in turn, communicates with the app via Bluetooth. Access to information is allowed to the attending physician and up to four other people chosen by the user. In any case, the patient can revoke this access at any time. The patch should be replaced every seven days
The digital pill will arrive in 2018 but the price has not yet been decided. The benefits for the community could be significant: according to the data reported by the Ansa agency, the so-called "non-adherence" to the treatments prescribed by doctors costs the United States 100 million dollars a year. Experts, however, have expressed concerns about the impact of this digital pill in the privacy field. In fact, there is a concern that the control of ingestion is a tool that can lead to the sanction of patients who do not comply. Dr. Jeffrey Lieberman, a Columbia University psychiatrist, in an interview with the New York Times called it the "Big Brother" effect, raising ethical questions on the subject. Indeed, the fact that the patient's health status can be monitored by external people suggests that even companies or insurance companies can access this type of information. Dr Ameet Sarpatwari, a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, told the New York Times that the digital pill "has the potential to improve public health but, if used improperly, could generate mistrust rather than trust." In any case, according to the manufacturers, a similar system will also help elderly patients suffering from neurodegenerative diseases, who often forget to take drugs.
Photo: aboutpharma.com