Medication adherence using a smart pill bottle

Abstract

Medication non-adherence refers to patients routinely failing to take their medication as prescribed, and is arguably the largest problem in healthcare. Suboptimal adherence leads to $300B in increased costs, $100B in lost revenues, and 125,000 premature deaths in the US each year. Wireless and low-power embedded computing technology is enabling the design of real-time intelligent pill bottles to increase adherence. This paper demonstrates a real-world solution using a bottle with advanced pill detection and wireless connectivity to a cloud infrastructure. The infrastructure aggregates the information and reminds patients to take their medication at appropriate times. It also alerts healthcare providers to any non-adherence.