About our project
The Problem We Solve
How often do you forget to take your medication? Do you constantly remind family members to make sure they are taking their pills? Those hard to read, little orange bottles do pile up. Medication non-adherence is a huge problem in outpatient medical care.
As a physician, I have been aware for years that people have real trouble keeping on track with medication. I’ve had ideas about the kind of device I would want them to use. Nothing available really met the need. Products tended to be both too difficult to use and to lack essential features. Aria is intended to overcome these shortcomings with innovative technology in design, tracking and access.
Medication doses are frequently missed, leading to excess morbidity and mortality. For some classes of medication, overuse and diversion are serious problems. Aria will change how patients and caregivers engage with their daily medication, saving lives and easing the burden of daily monitoring.
Chronic disease affects 25% of adults in the US, yet most only take their medication 50% of the time. Every year drug noncompliance kills more Americans than accidents, pneumonia and influenza combined. This lack of consistent medication usage or noncompliance costs Americans $244 billion every year in unnecessary emergency room visits, hospital admissions and costly treatments. Aria will improve non-compliance with breakthrough bluetooth technology and innovative biometric features.
Aria: An Innovative Design Solution
At DosePoint, we created a patented, patient-centric medication dispenser that uses advanced technology to change patient behavior, improve compliance, secure a patient’s medication and collect prescription usage data. Meeting the challenge of compliance presents an opportunity to improve health outcomes with minimal effort. The application of DosePoint’s technology will deliver great financial and health benefits to patients, healthcare providers, insurance groups, pharmaceutical companies and governments. DosePoint addresses this universal need by introducing Aria.
Aria Prototype
Month-long Pill Storage
*Dispensing Mechanism
Biometric Sensor for Access
The Aria Technology
Aria is a secure, pocket sized medication dispenser linked via Bluetooth to a smartphone. It tracks medication use and helps avoid missed doses. Aria has unique features that set it apart from competing products:
Holds a 30 day supply of medicine: The burden of use for patients or caregivers is minimized.
Bulk loaded: No blister pacs, cartridges, or hand filled compartments. Those demand either too much labor or too much infrastructure.
Works with any size pill or capsule: Pill sizes and shapes vary widely. Aria works with whatever pill you put into it.
Reliable and Smart : It works every time, does not jam, and uses optical sensors to confirm dispensing.
Connected: It communicates success/failure.
Secure: With a carbide drill, or a big enough hammer, you can open anything. So, the device doesn’t try to be Fort Knox. It is tamper evident (you can’t get pills out without breaking it open) and tamper aware (It tells on you if you do).
Flexible: Some prescriptions are complicated. Your Doctor might tell you to take 1 or 2 pills as needed every 6 hours but not more than 6 each day. Aria is the only available product with enough programming flexibility to do that.
Aria holds only one kind of medication at a time. An advantage of this is that Aria can manage as-needed medications. Some of the most problematic medications are those taken as-needed for pain, anxiety, or sleep. You might take 6 a day, or only a one month. Aria can both control and track how medicine is used.
Clinical Proof to date
Prototypes have been tested, but there have been no field trials.
FDA Status
The device is classified as category III exempt by the FDA. It is not subject to approval or GMP requirements. Notification of the FDA prior to sale is required. This is done by filing FDA forms 2891 and 2892.
How Aria Helps Patients
Aria benefits patients by improving medication adherence. Another benefit is that it deters casual theft of medication (which is a bigger problem than is commonly recognized).
How Aria Helps Doctors (or Other Care Givers)
Doctors have no way to know how medications are actually used at home. Aria will allow doctors to review medication use on a pill by pill basis. The number and time of day each pill is taken is recorded for your review. Overuse, theft, and diversion are impeded. Requests for early refills will be eliminated. It will be evident that you are taking every possible precaution with potentially habit forming medications.
How Aria Helps Hospitals, Institutions, and/ or Medical Facilities
New Medicare rules make hospitals financially responsible for readmissions for the treated condition within 30 days of discharge. Poor compliance with outpatient medication is a common cause of readmission. Aria can reduce readmission rates by improving medication adherence.
Diversion and theft of controlled substances is a chronic problem for health care facilities. Aria can be programmed for multiple users to limit access to controlled substances to authorized personnel. Aria’s biometric security can also keep a record of who accessed each tablet or capsule.
Insurance companies bear the financial costs of medication non-adherence. Health insurers will see reduced costs for care of chronic illness. Subscribers could be rewarded for good compliance or penalized for poor compliance as is now done for tobacco use.
How Aria Helps Our Partners
Pharmaceutical companies are increasingly assigned blame for the misuse of their products even though they have little to no control over their use. Some products have been the targets of legislative attempts at bans or removal from the market. Physician and patient acceptance of some products are adversely affected by government oversight practices and negative media portrayals. Aria could be adapted for use as packaging for medication. This would provide unprecedented control over the use of the product and might be used to provide real time data on consumer use on a scale never before available.
Clinical trials of new drugs are plagued by poor adherence to medication regimens. It takes only a few subjects with poor adherence to poison a data set. An overdose during a clinical trial is a disaster. Aria promotes adherence, but just as importantly, identifies subjects who are not following protocol. While this might not help with an intention-to-treat analysis, it would inform post hoc data analysis and continued research. It could clean up clinical trial data to a significant degree.
How We Will Spend Your Contributions
We have an excellent prototype and working models, so we are seeking support to enable final assembly. If the project just meets its funding goal, there will be 1,000 units built. This will prepare us for large scale production and demonstrate real interest in the marketplace.
I am talking with a local company that can do short run assembly. Through our MedStartr campaign we plan is to quickly expand the production of Aria. I am open to forming partnerships for manufacture and assembly. Hopefully MedStartr will demonstrate a large enough demand to go forward with mass production.
Who We Are
Lawrence A. Dunn, MD Founder and President.
I am a psychiatrist and researcher interested in improving patient adherence to outpatient medication regimens.
LinkedIn
How to Find Us
Our Website
-
Have a question?
If the info above does not help, you can ask the project creator directly.
-
-
){kind=link}
){kind=link}