A South African doctor has developed the SIMpill, a pill bottle that uses SMS to monitor how often pills are being taken and can send alerts to a patient's phone if they have missed a dose by mistake. Each time the cap is removed, a small cellular transmitter in the bottle sends a secure SMS to a central server, which stores information about the intervals in which the prescription should be administered. If something goes wrong with the dosage, the service sends a message to the patient's cell phone, alerting them of the discrepancy. Since many long-term infectious diseases become resistant to medication if they miss a dose, the SIMpill can make it easier to maintain a more structured regimen.

Technology Reminds Sick to Take Pills [AllAfrica via MedGadget]

There is a burgeoning market in the area of handheld, wireless patient diaries used by pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies in order to monitor patients’ responses to new drug therapies. One company that is experiencing significant growth is invivodata inc., whose eDiary PRO prompts patients in studies to answer questions about their real-time experience with a new drug or product. The FDA is giving this technology close attention, because they feel data collected in patients’ written diaries is not always accurate. The goal is to relay as much accurate data as possible in order to monitor patient reactions to drugs and to make sure they are safe to use.

Sacramento-based Sutter Health is one of the first hospital chains in the nation to put bar codes on patients and their pills. After using the bar codes for a full year at 10 of its hospitals, Sutter has found that the bar codes averted 28,000 medication mix-ups, out of 2.6 million doses. From the Sacramento Bee:

About 9 percent of the time, or in 2,600 cases, patients were saved from what could have been moderate or serious harm. The impetus for Sutter and a handful of other hospitals to try bar coding drugs was a groundbreaking study, released five years ago this week, that jolted the medical industry with a deadly statistic.

As many as 100,000 Americans a year were dying from preventable medication mistakes in hospitals, according to the report from the Institute of Medicine, prepared by a committee of the nation’s top scientists, doctors, and health policy experts. “That was a call to action,” said Gordon Hunt, chief medical officer for Sutter.

Armed with that study and others that soon followed, Hunt said he was able to persuade Sutter’s board of directors to spend $25 million to put a bar code scanner at every bedside at all 26 of its hospitals in Northern California by the end of next year. At that price, Hunt does not expect a financial return on his investment. “The return is in healthier patients,” he said.

No offense, but we think the Secret Service might want to pick up the ECG Shirt for Dick Cheney, a t-shirt with two built-in cardiac sensors that can keep track of your heart rate, and then if something catastrophic happens, can use a Bluetooth to connect to a cellphone and automatically send off that data to a doctor or medical center. Just make sure you let them know before you take the shirt off.

[Via BlueSerker]