The digital pill has just been approved
The US Food and Drug Administration has approved the use of a tiny censor that will monitor patient’s medication taking.
The dubbed Abilify MyCite is the first of its kind to be greenlighted, and is targeted at people suffering with mental health illnesses, such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.
Digital pills are usually the size of a grain of sand and can communicate with external devices, such as apps and patches.
The sensor is designed to tackle the expenditure of patients not taking their medication on time or at all.
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In the US taxpayers are spending between $100bn and $289bn on this issue per year, due to symptoms escalating and patients ending up in hospital.
This technology aims to prevent that by tracking their medication intake through the GPS-like system.
Professionals will now be able to know a patient’s compliance with their regimen, as opposed to receiving a self-report, and therefore will be able to encourage correct intake.
Another purpose for the invention of the digital pill is the ability to perfectly tailor and personalise medicine for patients.
Due to the lack of diversity in clinical trials, medication is often given following a one-size-fits-all manner.
One of the most frequent flaws with this is women are often given larger doses than necessary because of the size of the average man the medication has been tested on being larger than the woman.