Medication adherence is a legitimate issue, especially in the older population. And the Capshell concept, a system that tracks how often patients take their medicine, gets it about half right.
Basically, the Capshell dispenses individual doses of medicine upon request. These doses are both tracked for study by a doctor at a later date (to see if the patient is taking their medicine) and monitored by a system that will automatically text message a patient that forgets to take their pill.
Oh, and it looks super cool and glossy, featuring a neat slide-out cartridge design that eliminates the pain of turning child-proof caps—a few points that make it a bit different than competing products already on the market.
But the Capshell is ultimately a pretty superficial attempt at dealing with medication adherence. Taking medicine at the right time is only a small part of the real problem. For instance, did the patient take their medicine with food when they weren't supposed to? Is the patient supposed to take the pill twice daily, but only in the presence of symptoms? Did the patient even take the medicine at all, or did they just open the container?
Essentially, there are a multitude of ways that, seniors especially, don't take their medicine properly. And this system deals with one on them. Sort of.
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