Digital Pills: Impact of Rising Technology

Abstract

Digital Pills (DP) are an innovative drug-device technology that permits to combine traditional medications with a monitoring system to record data about medication adherence as well as patients’ physiological data without human intervention. The Digital Medicine System (DMS), a drug–device combination developed for patients with serious mental illness, together combines adherence measurement with pharmacologic action by placing an ingestible sensor in a pill, allowing for information sharing among patients, Health Care Providers (HCPs), and caregivers via a mobile interface. Non-adherence to medication compromises the helpfulness of psychiatric treatments in patients with Serious Mental Illness (SMI). The combination of wearable technology with a “Digital Ingestion Tracking Program” (DITP) embedded within a pain pill may allow patients, caregivers as well as healthcare providers to track ingestion of pills through the web or a Smartphone app. Digital adherence technology could be promising patient-centered strategies for monitoring adherence. In November 2017, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved a version of a second-generation antipsychotic, aripiprazole; embedded with a sensor (Abilify MyCite). The paper highlights the impact of DMS and provides detailed review about it.