iPills?

AUSTIN WAHLE – In 2017, the FDA approved the first digital pill to be available for the treatment of patients with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder (Klitzman, 2019). After the release of this pill, other similar pills have followed, including the first digital cancer pill containing chemotherapy (Klitzman, 2019). “A digital pill?” you ask? Well, this past decade has brought many technologically advanced solutions to various medical problems, one being the implementation of “Smart Pills.” “Smart Pills” are capsules that contain a small ingestible sensor (Condliffe, 2017). Once ingested, this sensor will ping a patch worn by the patient which will then send data to a smartphone (Condliffe, 2017). This data can be shared with doctors and the family of the patient and can be used to track whether the patient has been taking their medicine and whether they are taking the appropriate dosage. This has massive implications for patients with faltering memories and for patients suffering from schizophrenia or bipolar disorder who may generally be resistant to taking medication (Condliffe, 2017).

Apart from helping patients recall if they have taken their medication, this is also beneficial in informing doctors how closely the treatment plan is being followed. Doctors aim for 80% adherence to prescribed medications, but only a staggering 50% of medications for chronic disease are actually taken as directed and a third of patients fail to even fill their prescription (Viswanathan, 2012). When a patient comes in for a follow-up appointment without having taken the medication as prescribed, the doctor may believe the medication has been taken appropriately, and this presents a challenge to try to find some other means of treatment. In this way, this technology can likely make appointments more efficient and productive. This is undeniably beneficial from a healthcare perspective, but this access to internal patient information could also be seen as crossing some line of patient bodily autonomy. 

This technology is not limited to simply tracking whether or not a patient has been taking their medicine. These specialized capsules have also been proposed to perform other functions, such as detecting acidity levels, recording body temperatures, tracking internal pressure, imaging, and far more (Frost & Sullivan, 2017). These functions could, in theory, offer a way to track overall patient wellbeing with fewer visits to the doctor’s office. Under this scope, the pills could help screen for ulcers or tumors and could even reduce the need for invasive procedures such as certain endoscopies (Frost & Sullivan, 2017). Further advancements with batteries and memory systems could allow these capsules to be used for this sort of long-term sensing within the body (Frost & Sullivan, 2017).

 “Smart Pills” can undoubtedly be incredibly beneficial in many facets of medicine. Although this technological advancement could have, and probably already has had, substantial positive outcomes, there also seems to be something slightly eerie about the concept of someone having access to information taken directly from your body at any given moment. This almost seems like a concept that we would see while sitting on our couch, popcorn in hand, screening the latest episode of Black Mirror — an episode that would most certainly convey a dire warning about autonomy and privacy and what may happen when our privacy is not upheld. 

 Works Cited

Condliffe, Jamie. “The FDA Has Approved Smart Pills That Track When Patients Take Their Meds”. MIT Technology Review. November 2017. 

Frost & Sullivan. “Smart Pills Enable Convenient Diagnostics and Accurate Therapy”. Alliance of Advanced Biomedical Engineering. 2017. 

Klitzman, Robert. “‘Smart’ pills are here, and we need to consider the risks”. CNN. March 2019. 

Viswanathan, Meera, et al. “Interventions to Improve Adherence to Self-Administered Medications for Chronic Diseases in the United States: A Systematic Review”. Annals of Internal Medicine. December 2012. 

Photography Source: https://healthcare-in-europe.com/en/news/smart-pills-experts-caution-against-rapid-adoption.html