March 23, 2008 
I think we all can predict that the medical device industry should explode over the next few years. USA Today had a recent article on a “smart pillbox” which caught my eye.
According to Forrester Research, the market for home health monitoring technologies is expected to reach $5 billion by 2010 — and $34 billion by 2015.
As the article stresses, this technology will be important with over 30M Americans taking more than 3 medications per day and over 100,000 dying from adverse drug reactions.
Usually, I hear about things like glowing bottle caps to remind people to take their medications. Although the Med E-Monitor is a little bulkier, I like the fact that it does more than simply remind you. It also looks for adverse drug events and provides information. Ideally, one of these devices will simply generate refills through a simple click. [I have not read the studies but they claim to have raised adherence from 35-40% to 90% which would be significant.]
My big questions from looking at the website are:
- It holds up to 5 medications. What about those patients on 30 medications? Can it be modularized?
- Even if it can’t have modules, can it store the data and serve as the central reminder for medications not in there?
- Who programs it with every medication change? The MD. The patient. The company.
- Can it generate a refill request to the pharmacy? Can it generate a request for a renewal (i.e., a new prescription for my existing medication)?
- Will people pay $60 a month? Is the buyer, the children that live out of town and want their parent to be safe or the actual patient themselves?
Some of the other sites out there talking about solutions include:
Enabling Healthy Decisions 
Sometimes, the compliance rate of such dispensers is a function of how “compliance” is defined. About 2 years ago, I ran across the Pill Dispenser:MD.2:, which claimed an impressive 98.6% Medication Compliance Rate. It turned out that “compliance” occurred when/if someone pushed the correct button to dispense a pill after an audiovisual signal indicated a dose was due. If there was no immediate response the signal was repeated in larger amplitude. If there were still no response, family members, clinicians, friends would be notified. Regardless, when someone hit that button, regardless of what happened to the dispense pill, compliance was counted. I posted on this at 98.6% Medication Compliance.