Meet the Future Of Patient Compliance

You probably recall the classic series “The Jetsons,” a children’s cartoon that imagined a future in which housekeepers were pleasant robots, cars flew to offices that hovered in space and entire meals could be prepared at the touch of a button.

Had you been able to witness Jetson patriarch George ease into his elder years, perhaps you would have noticed some futuristic home medical equipment decorating his space-age apartment. How about a medicine dispenser that leaves a message on George’s boy Elroy’s and daughter Judy’s cell phones when old George forgets to take his morning pills? And there, on the nightstand, a glowing orb that shows George he needs to take his medicine?

It’s futuristic all right: an electronic pill bottle that calls your cell phone to warn that you’ve missed a dose, coupled with an ambient orb to sit on your kitchen countertop or by the bathroom sink that indicates whether you’ve taken your prescription on time.

Well, the future is now. The medicine bottle, called SimPill, joins a growing market for remote monitoring of health conditions. The container operates using cell phone technology.

The device distributor programs in the patient’s medication schedule. Then, when he opens the bottle and, presumably, takes his pills, it sends a wireless short message indicating that a dose has been taken to the distributor’s secure server, where the data is stored. If the patient fails to open the bottle, signaling he has missed a dose, the device text messages the patient’s cell phone and those of up to two caregivers — a family member, home care nurse or other clinician.

The technology is both incredibly advanced and remarkably simple. “There is almost no technology for the patient to work with,” says Paul Molinari, vice president of marketing for Acton, Mass.-based Clinical Technology Advisors, SimPill’s U.S. distributor. “The patient simply has to take his or her medicine on time and keep the device charged.”

Both the SimPill and the orb — which glows red to indicate when medication is overdue but changes to green when it is taken based on the information it receives from the pill bottle — are part of an “adherence initiative” developed by Partners Telemedicine, a division of the Partners HealthCare system founded by Massachusetts General and Brigham & Women’s hospitals in Boston.

By linking commercially available consumer technologies such as the pill bottle and the orb, Partners’ automated system monitors patient adherence to prescription medication and provides patients with real-time feedback — without requiring time from a health care provider.

Such feedback, predicts Partners Telemedicine Founder and Director Dr. Joseph C. Kvedar, will improve patient adherence and health outcomes, subsequently reducing health care costs and enabling elderly and disabled patients to remain at home.

“Telehealth is already having a profound impact on our health care system worldwide, and [is] helping to improve quality patient care through the novel application of available technologies,” according to Kvedar. “In the near future, telehealth will be an integrated standard of care, improving treatment outcomes and patients’ quality of life while providing cost-effective solutions and efficiencies in the delivery of personalized, expert health care.”

This particular study “is about a network of caregivers, not just notifying the patient but also the family member or professional caregiver,” Kvedar explains. “The onus is not all on the patient but on his or her son, daughter or visiting nurse — a concerted effort on everyone’s part.”

“When you add another party into the equation, the patient is more likely to comply” with his or her medicine regimen, Molinari adds.