Managing the meds from miles away

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Intel's Health Research & Innovation Group completed a six-month pilot of its Context Aware Medication Prompting system in March. The pilot program, conducted in Oregon with two dozen seniors who were taking multiple medications, is designed to remind cognitively impaired patients to take their medication if they appear likely to miss a dose.

Using sensors stationed around seniors' home, the system creates a baseline of their medication regimen and determines the best time to issue medication reminders. It then syncs up several devices, such as a wristwatch, television or phone. A prompt is given if the oerson forgets to take his or her medication.

"Although we're analyzing the data results, we've seen enough of the data to know that seniors love how they can personalize the reminders," Intel's Dishman said.

Some seniors liked the phone to ring with a reminder, while others preferred to watch TV and see a reminder pop up on the tube.

"These are seniors who don't want people reminding them they need prompting to take their medication, or family and friends to know they need a huge pill dispenser with an alarm," Dishman said. "They want something unobtrusive that will blend in with the environment."

Prior to undergoing the pilot, the seniors failed to take their medication as prescribed about 25 percent of the time, but afterward they showed improvement, Dishman said.

"We know there's been an improvement, we just don't know by how much yet," he noted. "People have been happy with (the system). They say it doesn't bug them or remind them to take their medication when they already have, or wake them up to take it if they're asleep."

Once the data from the pilot is analyzed, Dishman said, he hopes to conduct another six-month test by the end of the year. That pilot will aid the group in testing improvements made to the system, such as the TV prompt, which periodically did not work.

"Many of these capabilities that we're testing now will be in the marketplace in the next three years. It's not like rocket science," Dishman said.

Intel, like Accenture, would need to find a manufacturer to take its prototypes and craft them into marketable products.

Accenture, a systems integrator, has developed the Online Medicine Cabinet, a prototype for emerging health care technologies, said Peter Glaser, manager of innovation workshops for Accenture Technology Labs.

The Online Medicine Cabinet acts as an Internet health care portal stationed in the bathroom.

From the portal, medication reminders are issued, as well as warnings should a person select the wrong medication. These warnings rely on RFID tags put on the prescription labels, which track which medicine is being removed from the cabinet.

Although some hospitals use RFID technology to track medication use, it has yet to filter down to local pharmacies and consumers.

Glaser noted what while many improvements are under way in medication management, he has yet to find a device that will confirm that a person has actually swallowed the pill they removed from the bottle.

"There's been improvements in technology from different colored caps for different medications, but there's nothing sophisticated enough to tell if the pill has been swallowed or not," Glaser said. Think of the legal consequences, and maybe that's why it's an area corporations haven't approached" for research and development.

RFID chips, however, may one day be the answer. With RFID tags shrinking down to the size of poppy seeds, the technology may eventually be inserted into pills.

But Glaser notes that challenges exist with such a concept: "You have to convince people to take that kind of pill."