Noncompliance with medication is an age-old problem with serious consequences. Failure to take each dose of medicine prescribed often leads to treatment failure. In the case of infectious diseases, continuing transmission of the disease to others and the emergence of drug resistant strains are among the consequences that have public health implications. An elegant bioengineering solution to this problem is proposed, based upon a new and proprietary method of detecting fluorescence through the skin. By incorporating a fluorescent tracer compound into medication, ingestion of the tracer could be accurately documented, the time noted, and the data recorded for transmission to a remote monitoring site. Such a revolutionary device would be invaluable in many clinical situations. For example, it would help physicians ensure patient compliance with treatments that require strict adherence to a complex drug regimen, such as HIV disease therapy, asthma treatment, control of psychosis or drug addiction, immunosuppressive therapy for organ transplantation, and medical treatment of tuberculosis. Further, a compliance monitor would be very beneficial in the evaluation of results from clinical trials, allowing a distinction to be made between failure of the drug being tested and lack of patient compliance.
The long-term goal of this project is the commercial development of a wristwatch-like device that could log and transmit information documenting compliance, while being as convenient and satisfactory to the patient as possible.
