The future is now in the pharmaceutical industry, and there is perhaps no greater example of this than the evolution of digital pills.

As the name suggests, these pills use digital technology to improve patient care. This includes ensuring patients take their medication as required, considering an estimated 125,000 people die annually because they do not correctly take their medication.

Digital pills may be the solution patients and healthcare providers are searching for when it comes to ensuring patients take their medication as intended.

What are Digital Pills?

Digital pills are real pills that patients ingest, just like they would a standard pill. The difference is that digital pills are embedded with electronic circuits that allow medical professionals to track the pill’s progress and ensure that the patient is sticking to their recommended dosing schedule.

Digital pills are the next evolution in medication tracking for healthcare providers. With medication tracking, patients log into a smartphone or other internet-enabled device to track when they take their medication.

Doctors can then monitor their patients’ progress without needing to see them in the office. These apps can be beneficial for patients who forget to take their medication because they send reminders and alerts when patients are supposed to take their medicine. 

Digital pills take this another step further by eliminating the need for patients to open an app and track their progress every time they take a medication.

Who Benefits from Digital Pills?

It is unlikely that digital pills will replace traditional medicine for most prescriptions, at least in the near future.

For now, digital pills are primarily used for medications that treat severe conditions, such as severe depression or schizophrenia. Missing a dosage can lead to dire, potentially life-threatening consequences for these patients.

For example, Abilify Mycite is the first FDA-approved digital pill and is intended to treat patients with severe psychiatric disorders. It was approved by the FDA in 2017 and sends a Bluetooth signal after a patient ingests the pill. The signal is transferred to a patch the patient wears on their rib cage. That patch notifies a smartphone app that the patient has taken the medication.

The technology used to develop digital pills has evolved since 2017, leading to digital pills that don’t require the use of external patches. For example, PillCam pills are equipped with tiny cameras that display the patient’s digestive tract. Doctors can use the images to see how the drug is benefitting the patient and use those images to enhance patient care. The use case here is for digestive conditions, such as stomach ulcers.

The Future of Digital Pills

As technology continues to advance, we should expect to see more use cases for digital pills and more pharmaceutical companies developing them. In addition, costs will lower as more pharmaceutical companies embrace the cost-effectiveness of 3D printing technology.

There is no doubt that digital pills are a game changer for the medical field; however, there is also no guarantee that all medication will come in the form of a digital pill in the future.

References

Baum, S. (2017, November 17). Proteus Digital Health CEO talks about significance of FDA’s Digital pill approval. MedCity News. Retrieved July 13, 2022, from https://medcitynews.com/2017/11/proteus-digital-health-ceo-on-fda-approval/?rf=1

PillCam™ SB 3 system. Medtronic. (n.d.). Retrieved July 13, 2022, from https://www.medtronic.com/covidien/en-us/products/capsule-endoscopy/pillcam-sb-3-system.html

Zullig, L. L., Blalock, D. V., Dougherty, S., Henderson, R., Ha, C. C., Oakes, M. M., & Bosworth, H. B. (2018, July 13). The new landscape of medication adherence improvement: Where Population Health Science Meets Precision Medicine. Patient preference and adherence. Retrieved July 13, 2022, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6049050/