New medical milestone: US FDA accepts the application of "smart pill"

Source: Global Network September 15, 2015 according to the financial times, a smart drug that can tell doctors and patients that they have taken medicine is a step closer to being available U.S regulators accepted an application from a company that developed the first "digital tablet" for its drugs Although there is no guarantee that the application will be approved, the hope of this tablet produced by Proteus digital health is that it will help ensure that patients adhere to the prescription, thus reducing the expenses caused by not taking the right medicine For people with mental illness and memory problems such as schizophrenia and Alzheimer's, the pill may be particularly useful because such patients have particularly poor adherence to orders This progress shows how technology is opening up new frontiers in the field of medicine Based on a record $6.9 billion in investment in 2014, digital healthcare group attracted another $2.8 billion in the first half of this year, according to startup health, a research firm that tracks the industry Proteus, a Californian company, said the food and Drug Administration (FDA) had agreed to review the devices it developed The device is embedded in a schizophrenia drug produced by Otsuka of Japan Andrew Thompson, chief executive of Proteus, said the FDA's acceptance of its application was a milestone "This has opened up a new regulatory path that will allow the pharmaceutical industry to combine medical innovation with software innovation The "smart pill" contains a tiny swallowable sensor that detects when the drug reaches the stomach The sensor can communicate with the patch attached to the patient's skin, which will transmit relevant information to a mobile device This technology is expected to help patients manage their own treatment and allow nursing and healthcare personnel to monitor them It could also help a underfunded healthcare system ensure that expensive drugs are not wasted Proteus estimates that half of patients in developed countries do not follow the prescription In the United States, it is estimated that the cost of medical system caused by this situation is as high as 300 billion US dollars.