Where can using such a pill go wrong?

Like medication isn’t expensive enough?

Sounds like a Pandora’s box to me. I know the intention is good, but I’d run the other way.

@filmfann Definitely, definitely – I was thinking how much would this cost to patients in order to save money for doctors?

It seems like an excellent idea for purposes of research studies only.

Bad bad bad idea methinks except in certain special circumstances. I think it’s unethical to monitor whether or not someone is taking their medication unless they lack the mental capacity to decide for themselves if they will or not. Also, I would imagine something like this could be fooled easily. What if someone else swallows the pill besides the person to whom it was given?

I would think that the only time something like this should be used is when someone is taking court mandated medication, maybe someone who only committed a crime because they were off their meds or in the case of someone who is severely mentally ill. Even those times would be kind of iffy.

heck no….I’m on a ton of meds and I dont take all of them every day….the cost is crazy. I see insurance companies scolding.
seems kinda stupid. we have personal choice.

@KatawaGrey Ha, I didn’t think about how people would just make someone else swallow it? And that sounds like a bad idea.

@KatawaGrey What a great point!

I’m not sure I’m comfortable with this, even within the confines of medical research. There are many other ways to ensure that data collected is accurate in any kind of research.

Get a pillbox, I say.

“Such a pill is needed because many patients forget, refuse or bungle the job of taking their medication. This causes or exacerbates medical problems, spurs hospitalizations or expensive medical procedures and undercuts clinical trials of new drugs.
The American Heart Association calls patients’ failure to follow prescription regimens “the number one problem in treating illness today.” Studies have found, for example, that patients with chronic diseases normally take only about half their prescribed medications. According to the American Heart Association, 10 percent of hospital admissions result from patients not following the guidelines on their prescriptions. Other studies have found that not taking medication properly results in 218,000 deaths annually.
So-called “medication compliance” is a big problem for clinical trials, Bashirullah said, because failure to take experiment drugs skews studies’ results or renders them meaningless. As a result, researchers often require visual confirmation of participants taking pills, an extremely expensive proposition if hundreds or thousands of people are participating in the trials.”
People are idiots. Maybe they could just work on a pill for that.

I am not in favor of it, but I guess it would be handy those days when I cannot remember if I took my medication or not. I think it would have to be up to the patient. If I want to lie to my doctor abot compliance that is up to me. Not that I have ever seen the need to do it, but still.

@Trillian Okay, so you’re in favor of it?

Patients have a right to refuse medication, even in hospital settings.

Hmmm. I’d like to see some more research, but potentially…possibly, yes.
I know that they’re also working on pills that have markers so they target the specific area of illness rather than the whole system like we have now. I think that this is along the same lines.
Remember though, that my thinking is a bit different than most people here. I was a Hospital Corpsman for a long time. I’ve dealt with so many non-compliant diabetics, hypochondriacs who think they need every pill available, and people who first want antibiotics when they don’t need them then don’t take them all and try to dispense them to their kids or friends; “Oh, I have some Cipro in the medicine cabinet, try that!”
We are too complacent with pills, we think that if we can get them OTC they’re ineffective. We think that if one pill is good, four will be great….We take pills all the time without even thinking about it. Be honest, how many times have you just popped a pill into your mouth that someone gave you? Or seen it happen?
I didn’t mean to rant. To get back to your question, I’d cautiously advocate for the use of this in a limited trial, then with expanded applications. Yes.

No way….it’s a personal matter and if a person does not want to comply with medical advice he or she should not be externally forced to do so. The end is good, but way too many ways to abuse it.

Oh sure. what a great way to get that location/identity chip into resistant citizens.

Meds that rat on me. No, thanks.

When I was newly pregnant and seeking an obstetrician, one of my questions for the doctor was whether he believed in the then-proposed “squeal law” requiring doctors to notify a girl’s parents that she was pregnant. He thought it was an odd question coming from an over-30 married woman, but he answered it.

I didn’t want a doctor who put ratting on people ahead of patient care. If he’d said yes, he wouldn’t have been the one to deliver my babies.

@Jeruba I ask my OB’s if they are pro-choice.

@JLeslie, I asked that too. Those were my two questions. He said, “I think it’s a lousy method of birth control, but I definitely support choice.”

I hope that doesn’t derail this thread.

@Jeruba @JLeslie I never even thought of asking those questions! Thanks for giving me the idea, I hope one day I get to try them out.

I’d be in favor of it in certain circumstances – Alzheimer’s patients for instance. (There was a assisted care facility in FL a few years back that was testing RFID chips for Alzheimer’s patients so that doctors had full medical information about the patient without having to rely on patient memory.)

I wouldn’t want to see it become an accepted practice for everyone. Some patients might willingly accept the monitoring, however.

For some unknown reason, I am terrible about taking pills. I just don’t want to do it. I know it doesn’t make any sense, but there it is. I have reminder apps on my iPhone to make sure I don’t conveniently “forget”.

So there could be some cases where it might help people.

For instance, convicted sex offenders who are court-mandated to take antiandrogen medications – I’d have no problem with a medication monitoring system being part of their parole.

Sounds like a bad idea.

By the way, wouldn’t this set off the metal detectors at the airports?

control is meant to be in your hands and nobody else’s

Hmmmm, well, I always assume that a doctor has prescribed me a medication because I need it…. & I always finish whatever course of pills I get, so it wouldn’t affect me. Although I don’t like the idea of being grassed-up by a pill, it’s abit 1984.

screw that… more radio signals in and around our bodies. Extensive cancer studies first.

It would have been a great idea for my mom. She took too many of her coumadin over a period of time and her blood tests were off the wall!

Some people save their pills to use them for suicide.

@flo: So the doctor would be able to know that someone had taken more pills than they were supposed to and be able to do something about it. That seems like a notch in the pro column to me.

@KatawaGrey that is what I was refering to. I didn’t mean “we need more people to commit suicide so it is not a good thing.”

@flo: Okay, makes sense. Thanks for the clarification. :)

@KatawaGrey no problem at all.