Tattletale Pills Let Doctor Know If You're Taking Your Medicine

GAINESVILLE, Fla. -- If you forget to do what your doctor tells you, you’re not alone.

In fact, the American Heart Association says up to 10 percent of hospital admissions result from patients not following the guidelines on their prescriptions. But now, engineers have created a way to make sure you’re following orders.

First: swallow the non-toxic, chip-coated pill. Once the device hits your stomach, it sends a signal to a receiver -- like a watch or a bracelet -- which logs everything. This info is uploaded to a database that doctors can access.

http://www.thedenverchannel.com/health/24085352/detail.html

I pop a bucketful of pills every day and rarely miss doses, but I think this is a great idea.

I also envision a day when you just hand the pharmacist your script and a machine makes a patch with all your meds on it that you just stick on your body. That would be REALLY cool.

But before all that, we should see more and more of "once-a-week" and "one injection a month" medications.

I hate popping so many pills, it's very easy to say "the hell with it" and ditch the medication,which I did once many years ago. A good chunk of chronic illness survival is "med adherence"..it's just going to keep on getting easier!

My company is actually working on treatments that will replace once a day pills with once every 3-6 month infusions.
I take a decent amount of pills aday too, so I look forward to some sort of reminder. I do miss some doses especially after busy days...
On Edit: this could be a lifesaver for people with mental illnesses who become very dangerous to themselves and others when they go off their meds...

I think this would be an amazing idea.