Future of Pill Boxes

Intelligent pill boxes - Pill Boxes go Hi-Tech

Lately I have been involved with a lot of disease management portals and programs. There are a few unique challenges that I have seen hampering the success of these programs.

1. The name chronic puts off people - they do not want it to remind them of disease etc.
2. The enrollment is high but the retention is low
3. The more the features on the portal the lesser the usage
4. Change in behaviour is more important for the success than the tools

I came across a few very interesting technologies that can change the way we manage pills going forward. The good old pill box has changed little since our grandma's time. The pills in turn have taken a drastic change to gene based treatments etc.

I would like to talk about the emerging trend in pill boxes. The entry of what I would call "Intelligent Pill Boxes". There are a few products that are available in the market today that make these pill boxes hi-tech. They can sense when the pill was taken, if it was taken, if not talk to wireless and cell phone networks and send out reminders, plug this into a disease management program and boom, you have the ability to roll out a "carrot and stick" policy in your chronic care and disease mangement programs.

There is tremendous opportunity in this emerging market. I carry a sample intelligent pill box and show it to my customers and it does not stop surprising them. I think the key issues towards adoption of these would be - cost, quality and ease of use and integraiton into existing programs.

I will talk about a new trend in the disease management program rollout using cell phones as a media in my next blog. Keep watching this space.