Edward Greeno, the medical director of the Masonic Cancer Clinic at the University of Minnesota in the US, has started deploying new digital pills with a tiny, ingestible sensor. The sensor transmits health data from inside the body to a wearable patch placed on the patient's abdomen, which then connects to mobile app doctors and patients can have access to.
According to Greeno, the health data collected by the sensor could check patients' health and behavior, allowing doctors to monitor their heart rate, activity level, as well as sleep cycle. The information will then be compiled in a database that doctors can retrieve from their devices.
The sensor - made by a California company called Proteus Digital Health - is just about the size of a grain of sand which will be dissolved in the gastrointestinal tract. It could also tell whether the patient has ingested a medication or not, the South China Morning Post reported.
The goal of the digital pill is to determine if patients take their medications when they should. This is a vital step, particularly for conditions like cancer, depression, and schizophrenia, since some patients struggle to take their prescribed medications.
As part of the pilot program, backed by Fairview Health System, doctors started pairing the sensor with a common chemotherapy drug capecitabine - used to treat stage 3 and 4 colorectal cancer patients. Seven patients with advanced colorectal cancer were reportedly taking the digital pill. The California-based company hopes to enroll more than 750 patients across the country in the program within the next two years.
However, ingestible technology raised concerns among ethicists and experts following the approval of the US Food and Drug Administration to digital pills in 2017. One particular concern is that the health data might be vulnerable to hackers.
Still, a lot of experts said ingestible technology could help doctors ensuring patients are taking their prescribed medications. Greeno also said this new digital pill helps him pointing out if his patients were lying about their behavior. Some of his patients struggle to take multiple pills each day, while others don't want to deal with the side effects of the medication.
A 2013 study cited by the US National Centre for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) indicates a "common and costly problem" in the health-care world is not taking medicine. The study has found that about 30 percent to 50 percent of adults in the United State are not adherent to long-term medications - leads to roughly US$100 billion in preventable costs annually.
