• Home
  • Applications
      • App Analytics
      • Blockchain
      • BPM
      • Collaboration
      • Configuration Management
      • CPQ
      • Container Management
      • Customer Experience Management
      • Cyber Security
      • Data Center
      • Data Platform
      • DMS
      • EAM
      • Enterprise Mobility
      • ERP
      • Enterprise Search
      • Enterprise Telecom
      • GIS
      • GRC
      • HR
      • IT Services
      • Legal
      • Machine Vision and Imaging
      • Marketing
      • Master Data Management
      • Portal Software
      • Predictive Analytics
      • Procurement
      • Project Management
      • Sales
      • Supply Chain
      • Unified Communications
      • Workflow
  • Verticals
      • Aerospace & Defense
      • Banking
      • Bioinformatics
      • BioTechnology
      • Construction
      • Contact Center
      • E-commerce
      • Education
      • Field Service
      • Food and Beverages
      • Government
      • Healthcare
      • Insurance
      • Life Sciences
      • Logistics
      • Manufacturing
      • Oil & Gas
      • Remote Monitoring
      • Retail
      • Robotics
      • Utilities
  • Technologies
      • Adobe
      • Amazon
      • Artificial Intelligence
      • Augmented Reality
      • Avaya
      • Big Data
      • Business Continuity
      • BI
      • Chatbot
      • Cloud
      • Content Delivery Network
      • DevOps
      • Drone Technology
      • e-Discovery
      • EA
      • Graphics Tech
      • IBM
      • IoT
      • Machine to Machine
      • Microsoft
      • Nintex
      • Oracle
      • Robotic Process Automation
      • Salesforce
      • SAP
      • Telematics
      • Testing
      • Video Surveillance
      • Wireless
  • partner conferences
  • Subscribe
  • Whitepapers
  • About us
  • Home
  • Life Sciences

Pharmaceuticals Move into Internet of Medical Things

By Josh Stein, Cofounder & CEO, AdhereTech

Josh Stein, Cofounder & CEO, AdhereTech

If you were to make an informal list of the most revolutionary, transformative, and successful companies of the past decade, which ones would you name? Chances are, you’d select powerhouse tech firms like Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, and Netflix. Maybe you’d also include some companies, like Uber or Airbnb and there are hundreds of other firms that could be on this hypothetical list as well. But instead of debating those points, let’s focus on the similarities of the aforementioned companies.

"Smart medical devices must be incredibly easy for patients to use in order to facilitate mass adoption"

The companies are technology based. They have designed and manufactured products that many people use almost every day. They have played a huge role in transforming industries like advertising, communication, commerce, entertainment, and travel. If we boil it down altogether, we eventually see an overarching commonality: they have all created wonderful products and these products consistently improve.
More importantly, they are able to evolve in the right direction because these firms have an immense amount of data about how people use their products. These companies know how their user interacts with their site or device, the duration of product usage, when the user uses their product, and why the user stops using their product.

Now, let’s compare this level of insight to the information that’s available for pharmaceutical companies to leverage. Pharma spends billions developing new drugs–and billions more marketing them once they’re approved. Yet pharmaceutical companies don’t have detailed or accurate insights into how patients use their drugs, when patients use their drugs, and why patients stop using their drugs. Yet if pharma works towards relevant data collection and analysis, then new market opportunities would gradually open for them.

With smart medical devices like AdhereTech’s smart pill bottle, pharma companies are beginning to collect–and leverage–the potential information concerning the consumer’s behavior. In fact, AdhereTech’s smart pill bottles have been used by top healthcare companies and pharmaceutical firms since 2013. Our solution is currently distributed from hospital pharmacies, mail-order pharmacies, and clinical trial sites. AdhereTech has active customer engagements with a number of top healthcare firms, including three top-15 pharmaceutical companies (confidential), two top-20 national pharmacies (confidential), The Mount Sinai, health systems Partners HealthCare, Cincinnati Children’s Hospital, The Dara Farber Cancer Institute and more.

Here is how our solution works: AdhereTech smart pill bottles automatically can measure if patients have taken their medication, and data is automatically sent from the bottles to our servers, where it is analyzed in real-time. If a dose is missed, AdhereTech reminds the patient and/or caregiver via a series of customizable features, such as automated phone calls or text messages-as well as on-bottle lights and chimes. On average, AdhereTech increases adherence by over 20 percent and duration by over 25 percent.

As AdhereTech continues to collect this newly gathered crucial data, we develop novel insights into the drivers of non-adherence–and the solutions that work for specific types of patients. These inputs are used to create innovative interventions and personalization algorithms. In fact, we consider ourselves a hardware-enabled data and software company.

AdhereTech is part of "The Internet of Things" (IoT), which describes the emergence of Internet-connected devices to improve the lives of users. Concerning healthcare, there are infinite ways in which IoT tools can be used to improve patient care-and it’s happening sooner than you might think. In the past few years, we've seen the emergence of connected medical devices such as smart heart rate monitors, blood pressure cuffs, glucometers, asthma inhalers, thermometers and pill bottles. Let's call this "The Internet of Medical Things" (IoMT).
 
Last year I gave a TEDMED Talk at the TEDMED conference about this topic. My main point is that smart medical devices must be incredibly easy for patients to use in order to facilitate mass adoption. This is a simple and important notion, yet it is too often ignored within the IoMT.
At AdhereTech, this idea has guided every design and user experience feature that we have built into our smart pill bottles. We have even distilled this philosophy into three design principles, which we refer to each day:

1. The device must work the moment the patient gets it, with no setup, no assembly, no downloads and no syncing required.
2. The device should be used in the exact same way as the regular non-connected version of the device, so it's simple for the user.
3. The battery in the device should last very long—ideally multiple months— without needing to be recharged.

In my TEDMED Talk, I elaborate on how we have accomplished these feats. Next time you use any smart connected device, please think about its required setup, ease-of-use and battery life. Then consider about how much better the product would be if even one of these factors were improved.
The IoT will soon become as ubiquitous as the Internet itself, and the IoMT has the potential to transform the way in which healthcare is delivered. Patients will be the group that ultimately decides which devices will be adopted, so we must always remember to design these tools for patients above all else.

CIO Speaks

Our Calling and Time

Vincent A. Marin, CIO,...

Information Security is More than Information Technology

Nick Coussoule, SVP & CIO,...

Internet of Things

Tom Basiliere, CIO, Provant

Centralizing Remote Management To Enhance ROI On Renewables

Matt Hall, CIO, ContourGlobal

New Editions

Vendors

  • Courage LLC: Engendering Seamless Oracle Cloud Migration

    Eric Wimer, Co Owner & President, Courage LLC

    FAST: Changing the Way Insurers Think about Technology

    John Gorman, COO and Tom Famularo, CEO, FAST

    Genius Avenue:  The Intelligent Insurtech Optimizers

    Sherry Hoskinson, CEO, Genius Avenue

    Imprezzio: Juggernaut of the Insurance Industry

    Russell Page, CEO, Imprezzio

    ACD: Cracking the Digital Code for Claims Management

    Ernie Bray, CEO, ACD

    edjuster: A Vanguard in the Insurtech Sphere

    Andy Williams, President and CEO, edjuster

  • Systems Consulting Services, Inc.: Streamlining Underwriting Processes

    Ken Wayman, President, Systems Consulting Services, Inc.

    Smart Communications: Delivering More Meaningful Customer Conversations

    Bob Dunfee, VP, Product Marketing, Smart Communications

    Simply Easier Payments: Simplifying Payment Processing in Insurance

    Duke Williams, President, Simply Easier Payments

    CHSI Technologies: Designing software for the next generation of insurance professionals

    Mike Ziethlow, UX Architect, CHSI Technologies

    Virtual Benefits Administrator: Real-Time Claims Payment

    Tom Witter, President, Virtual Benefits Administrator

    InsurIQ:  Driving Innovation through Digital Insurance

    Brian Harrigan, Founder and CEO, InsurIQ

Copyright © 2018 CIOApplications. All rights reserved. Registration on or use of this site constitutes acceptance of our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.

follow on linkedinfollow on twitter
This content is copyright protected

However, if you would like to share the information in this article, you may use the link below:

https://www.cioapplications.com/cxoinsights/pharmaceuticals-move-into-internet-of-medical-things-nid-443.html