First Digital Pill is Approved by the FDA

There’s now a way for doctors to truly know if a patient has taken their medicine. It’s by means of a digital pill and the FDA has just approved it.

The Food and Drug Administration just announced the approval this week on Monday. The administration has approved a digital pill that is embedded with a sensor, allowing doctors to know whether and when patients have taken their medicine.

The tablet and embedded sensor is called Abilify MyCite.

Dr. William Shrank, chief medical officer of the health plan division at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, commented, “When patients don’t adhere to lifestyle or medications that are prescribed for them, there are really substantive consequences that are bad for the patient and very costly.”

The way the digital medication would work is patients would agree to take the digital version of Abilify, an anti-psychotic, and would sign a consent form that allows doctors and up to four other people to receive electronic
data that shows the date and time the pills are taken.

“Being able to track ingestion of medications prescribed for mental illness may be useful for some patients,” said Dr. Mitchell Mathis, director of the Division of Psychiatry Products in the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research.

“The FDA supports the development and use of new technology in prescription drugs and is committed to working with companies to understand how technology might benefit patients and prescribers.”