Necklace could help patients take their medication on time

May 20, 2008|By Alex Nunes, Columbia News Service

NEW YORK — Sharon Brangman, a doctor of geriatric medicine in Syracuse, N.Y., is accustomed to forgetful patients. Once, a patient mistakenly took multiple doses of his heart medication and slowed his heart rate to a life-threatening level.

He had to be hospitalized and have a temporary pacemaker installed. "He could have very well died," said Brangman, chief of geriatrics at Upstate Medical University.

Brangman estimates that at least 60 percent of her patients have taken their medication incorrectly at least once.

Nationally, one in three adults who are prescribed drugs to take regularly say they frequently do not follow their treatment plans, according to a Harris Interactive survey.

Nearly two-thirds of the adults who were prescribed drugs in 2004 said they forgot to take their medication.

Now engineers at Georgia Institute of Technology are developing a sensor-equipped necklace to help patients take their medication on time. The product is called MagneTrace, and it uses magnetic sensors embedded in pills to detect when a pill is ingested. The tiny sensors pass through the patient's digestive system.

How it works

If a pill is not taken at the correct time, the necklace is designed to send a signal to a smart phone, which then alerts the patient. If that prompt is ignored, the phone contacts a doctor or caregiver. The necklace and the software for the phone have been created, but the developers have not yet transferred the software to the phone.

"It will have an immense effect on the health care system if a system like this one helps patients comply with their medication," said Maysam Ghovanloo, the developer and assistant professor at Georgia Tech's School of Electrical and Computer Engineering. Pharmacy experts estimate that the problem costs the health care system at least $100 billion annually in expenses such as hospital visits, surgeries and new prescriptions.

The necklace, which has at least one year of testing before it is ready to be approved by the Food and Drug Administration and marketed for general use, is not a cure-all. It will not help patients who don't take their medicine for reasons other than forgetfulness. And some doctors worry that placing magnetic tracers in pills to trigger the necklace could be dangerous.

The developers will soon begin testing the necklace on animals. The device is built around a dog collar for now, but Ghovanloo said it can easily be refashioned for humans.

But it will take more than a necklace for the device to work; pharmaceutical companies will need to produce pills with a magnetic tracer in them. Critics say the cost of those tracers could outweigh potential savings from the necklace.

The product would also do little for people who do not take their medication because it's too expensive or for a myriad of reasons other than forgetfulness. "Their assumption is that all this forgetfulness is because people just forget, and that's just not the case," said Bruce Berger, head of the department of pharmacy care systems at Auburn University. "Being reminded to take a drug you're not really sure you need, it costs too much, or it has side effects you're not tolerating is not going to make you take it more."

The necklace also may be inconvenient for some patients. "You're asking someone who may or may not be compliant to now wear a necklace and make sure that necklace is on when they take their medication," said Jack Fincham, a professor at University of Missouri School of Pharmacy. "Many people, not only females but males, would balk at wearing something day in and day out."

Some too senile

Nancy Dortzbach, a professional caregiver from Lakeport, N.Y., said she has had patients with crippling Alzheimer's or dementia who are too senile to benefit from the necklace. Her current patient, an elderly woman, once took all her pills out of a cabinet and tossed them about her home. When Dortzbach asked what happened, the patient said she could not remember.

Nancy Dortzbach, a professional caregiver from Lakeport, N.Y., said the necklace would help patients who have limited impairments and memory loss. "People work all their lives, save their money and have to give it all away to caregivers," Dortzbach said. "There's a lot of people around the world that wouldn't need a caregiver if they had that device to remind them to take their medicine."

Brangman, the doctor of geriatric medicine, said some of her patients already have difficulty using the Life Alert necklace, which features a button elderly people can push in an emergency. "I have patients who forget to push the button or even wear the little device."

Brangman, who has many patients who take multiple medications, is concerned that swallowing too many magnets could harm patients. Ghovanloo said the product tests will address that issue.

"We need to make sure that these magnets stay apart so that they don't form a blockage in the stomach," Ghovanloo said. "The coating that we have around this tracer is to make sure that the magnets stay apart."