Patient Care and Compliance

It has been our effort to attempt to revolutionize healthcare by leveraging technology to offer the consumers benefits that they have come to like and appreciate in other sectors, the stark example being that of banking which has gone from tedious to convenient with the press of a click. In a recent article, MIT news has featured students who alongwith the Prajnopaya Foundation have pioneered an interesting and cheap way to ensure patient compliance.

One of the major challenges in healthcare is that of medication adherence: ensuring that patients follow the timing and dosage of long, complex prescriptions. Non-adherence has particularly dire consequences in the developing world, where 2 million patients perish of tuberculosis alone despite access to medication, which was what led to people searching for a method to solve this problem.

The uBox is a convenient, palm-sized, intelligent pill dispenser, which reminds a patient when it is time to take his medication, records when a patient has taken a dose, and prevents a patient from double-dosing. The uBox stores 14 doses and is also capable of recording interactions with other devices such as cell phones, PDAs and the uKey.

In its simplest form, the uBox can be used as a device that reminds patients to take their oral medication at the appropriate time, and prevents overdosing. A patient, family member, health worker, or pharmacist may load the uBox with medication and program the dosing schedule using, say, a PDA. If further supervision is required, a doctor or pharmacist may collect and view the data gathered by the uBox to monitor the patient’s adherence over time using the uSoft software.