When Paranoia Meets Reality: Your Medicine Snitching On You

Medication non-compliance is a problem: patients don't take their pills.  We hear about it all the time in psychiatry: people don't take their medications and they relapse.  Sometimes they decide they don't need them when they do, sometimes they don't like the side effects or risks of the medications, but mostly, they just forget.  You may hear about this problem as if it belongs to psychiatry, but it doesn't. Patients don't take their cardiac medications, either; in fact humans are only randomly compliant with all types of meds.Swoop in technology, here to solve the problem.  Now sensors placed in tablets can notify the doctor and up to four other people to inform them if and when a patient has taken their pill!  And what pill was was the first to be approved for the use?  Abilify: an anti-psychotic medication used to treat schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, and also used to augment anti-depressants.  Was that the wisest choice?  To have a tattle-tale system in a medication used to treat paranoia?  I'm thinking there could be a better place to start.So the patient swallows a medication and his stomach acid signals the sensor.  He also has to wear a skin patch on his abdomen, under his ribs.  A notice goes out to an App on his doctor's phone, and to anyone else he wants notified (presumably himself).  He has to consent to this, but questions have been raised about whether the courts will require patients to do ...
Source: Shrink Rap - Category: Psychiatry Authors: Source Type: blogs