Beep! Beep! Time to take your pill! Beep! Beep! You have missed your afternoon pill! What if there was something that could always remind us about our daily prescription tablets? And what if the pill itself did this? Nothing is impossible nowadays, you bet.

According to new reports, pharmaceutical company Otsuka is working on a medicine which will make sure that patients take their medicines timely according to their physician’s instructions. This pill is first among its kind. It is basically a digital medicine that combines prescription medicine with sensor technology.

It is to be noted that the pharmaceutical company Otsuka has been working with its antipsychotic drug Abilify in a series of experiments to test these new digital drugs. In these digital drugs, a miniscule chip is embedded inside the pill. This chip can be easily detected by an app (developed by California health technology company Proteus) when the patient swallows it.

The app detects the sensor and confirms that the pill has been ingested by the patient. And if the same patient forgets to take his/her pill according to the prescription, the app alerts the doctor in medical care regarding this lapse. A small piece of magnesium and copper is placed inside the pill as part of the sensor system. When these two metals contact the acidic environment of the stomach, a small voltage is produced by these two metals which is easily detected by a sensor placed on the skin of the patient’s torso.

After this, the sensor sends this information to the Proteus app on a mobile phone and this data reaches the physician (only with the permission of the patient).

Both the drug and the sensor system have been approved by the FDA in two separate applications. But now the agency plans to test it as a unit based on some new standards regarding digital medicines. Also since Proteus app can work with any medicine, its evaluation with respect to medicines of diabetes and blood pressure is also on. If approval comes along, a new era of digital medicines awaits us.

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Author:Technology Blog