Pill cap 2.0 ? It’s time for your medicine cabinet to become IT literate. Yes, plans have been developed, the hardware and software ready to go. The carriers are dreaming big about subscriptions to a service that reads your medicine bottles over your bathroom sink. Gigaom reports that at C.E.S. 2011 the activity about tablets was intense, however there were other more profitable things going on behind those doors on the sides of the exhibit hall.
For example? Your medicine cabinet. AT&T said last week it would provide the service behind an innovative pill cap that will connect to its network and text users when it’s time to take their medicine, or it could text a caregiver.
The nifty little pill bottle top costs $10 per cap and requires a $15 per month service plan. That’s likely worth it for people who need reminders about the drugs they or a loved one are taking, but on a per-megabyte basis that $15 per month nets out to about $25 per MB, although it’s not clear if AT&T gets the full $15. The folks at Vitality, the maker of the cap, said the connected cap transmits less than 20 kilobytes of data per day over the network — a mere crumb when compared to bandwidth hogs watching streaming video on their iPhones.
Vitality relies on pharmacies to dispense drugs in GlowCaps. Chains bid on how many of the caps they can distribute and get paid each time they dispense a bottle with one. Vitality recently launched its program with Express Scripts, one of the largest pharmacy benefit managers, to distribute certain medications in bottles outfitted with its caps. When does a non-event become an event?
The device has been shown to lift adherence. Data from a Partners Healthcare study released last month shows adherence increased 27%. Patients adhered to medications 98-99% of the time when the pill cap's reminder services, along with financial incentives, were used, according to data collected by the Center for Connected Health, a division of Partners Healthcare.
“Across all bottles in the field, we see compliance above 85%,” added Reim. Compared to what he said is the going compliance rate of roughly 65%, plus or minus depending on the drug, “That kind of 20% improvement in compliance has ramifications for outcomes, sales and new sources of data.”
So your spouse or significant other, mother, father will no longer have to berate you ‘not to forget your cough syrup"'’.
In 2011 expect there to be an explosion of ‘intelligent home devices"’ broadcasting your compliance, vital signs, and also most likely biopsying your wallet. What’s in Your Wallet?