The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved the country’s first drug with a digital ingestion tracking system.
Abilify MyCite is a pill that digitally tracks whether patients have taken the medication. The pill contains a sensor that, once ingested, sends a message to a patient’s wearable patch, which then transmits the information to a smartphone application. This voluntary process allows patients, caregivers, and physicians to track this information through a web-based portal if the patient has given consent. Experts believe that such digital devices could have a positive impact on public health by addressing a longstanding problem; in this case, that patients do not take their medicines as prescribed.