A High-Tech Pillbox

December 3, 2013

The Vaica solution is SimpleMed, an automated pill dispenser. The matrix box has pill slots for a week, four per day. Pre-programmed by the patient, primary caretaker or Vaica call center, the box sends alerts to the patient when it’s time to take a med, or it can send an alert to the caregiver if pills were missed. In critical cases it can work as a two-way system with a panic button.

This straightforward solution to help dispense medication is connected to the cloud and online environment. When paired with other basic devices, SimpleMed becomes a powerful monitoring center for doctors to know if the medication is working or if it should be adjusted.

One concern when buying into a new high-tech device is the learning curve. SimpleMed can be programmed from home, or the call center can program it for you. It can send personalized messages to go along with every pill slot, such as “Take me with water.”

“Medication compliance is documented at about 50% within one year, but after one or two it goes down to 33%,” says Margalit. The American Heart Association concurs by stating the number one problem in treating illness today is ensuring that people take their prescribed meds. Can the SimpleMed deliver on its promise to make medicine compliance better? In one clinical trial at an Israeli center where patient compliance was already high at 70 percent, SimpleMed managed to boost this number to 96%.

The device is currently available in different markets worldwide and can be programmed to work in English, French, Portuguese, Spanish and Hebrew.

Source: Excerpts of an article by Rivka Borochov, Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs