AlignMap

Same Old Functions But It Does Look Slick

The Capshell, featured at the  Yanko Design Blog, operates much like the other automated pill dispensers:

The device records when medication is taken, and shows the user the correct intervals programmed by the pharmacist. If not activated at the correct time, the device sends an alert to the users phone via text, or “SMS.” Once in the grip of the user, it opens easily by turning round, revealing the opening corresponding with the time of day. This way of opening is helpful to the elderly, as it eliminates hard-to-open caps. Each days replacement tube is labeled clearly with text and with Braille numbering.

The packaging is, however, unique. The steel and gray containers seem a 1990s update of the venerable pneumatic tubes, a design dating to the early 1800s.

Pneumatic Tube used in some US post offices

Even the opening latch mechanism seems familiar.

Capshell

I am keeping the Capshell in mind. It should look great in Mom’s Manhattan pied-a-tier.

Alignmap In Cites Goes Video

A plethora of compliance-pertinent videos are now available online.  I’ve begun posting some of these flicks on this blog’s tumblelog counterpart, AlignMap In Cites.

Videos selected for the AlignMap In Cites Patient Compliance Theater meet one or more of the following inclusion criteria:

1. Presentations of patient compliance research that briefly and clearly present highlights of findings
2. Tips targeted to patients or clinicians that may improve adherence
3. Demonstrations of and infomercials about devices that ostensibly enhance adherence – or at least amuse me.
4. Testimonials from patients and pontifications from clinicians that provide useful information, reveal pertinent attitudes that could have a positive or negative impact on patient compliance, or surpass a difficult to articulate but easy to recognize threshold of – oh, let’s call it eccentricity.
5. Anything else that strikes my fancy.

The following videos in the list that follows have been posted to AlignMap In Cites in the past 24 hours. The links below go directly and only to the post indicated. These posts can also be accessed en masse by going to the AlignMap In Cites home page and scrolling back through the chronologically listed posts.

Now Showing
The AlignMap In Cites Patient Compliance Theater

Infomercial about the e-Pill Cube Pill Timer and Pillbox My first impression, based on the rather complex explanation of its operation, is that the device might be better positioned as a test of cognition rather than a convenient medication dose reminder.

Tips to enhance adherence to medication regimen Nothing unusual but potentially helpful ideas about remembering to take ones medications. Targeted to patients.

Medication compliance survey: Moderately self-serving presentation and recommendations from The National Community Pharmacists Association.

Infomercial about the e-Pill MD2 dispenser

Psych Medication Non-compliance: A patient’s own story of medication noncompliance.

Adherence to ARVs — Part 1 and Adherence to ARVs — Part 2: Poignant patient educational video from Baragwanath Hospital, Soweto, South Africa  promoting adherence to anti-HIV ARV drugs.

How to Improve Patient Compliance in Dyslipidemia Diagnosis: Medscape produced video report on study affirming value of electronic patient reminders.

Importance of Patient Compliance in Healing: Presented by a clinician and targeted to patients. Excerpt: So, do what the doctor tells you. Try to be compliant. Try to get better. And if you need our help, we’re Baker Chiropractic. We put patients first.

Almost certainly the most commonly used and typically recommended patient compliance enhancement device is the pillbox.

And pillboxes have frequently made appearances on the AlignMap site. Letterman, Pills, & Compliance Enhancement reported on Dave Letterman’s use of a common seven-day pill dispenser with flip lids on his show:

A spiffier Bang & Olufsen pill dispenser, capable of producing a visual or acoustic signal to the patient when a dosage is due and providing feedback to the patient via a red, yellow or green lights that indicate how well that individual has been taking the medication. was featured in Dispensing Pills In Style.

Electronic pillboxes are, it seems, quite the thing. This one was featured in The Latest Electronic Pillbox.

And the manufacturer of the model shown below claimed compliance rates of 98.6%, a statistical accomplishment which was explained in the conveniently named AlignMap post, 98.6% Medication Compliance.

Best of all, a pillbox success story was the focus of Pillbox Organizers May Improve Adherence To HIV Treatment.

How To Use Pillboxes and Medication Organizers

As it turns out, recent research shows that pill organizers have a great potential for enhancing medication adherence but also have their own set of recurrent problems. That is hardly unique: most tools that are useful also carry risks. The odd part is that physicians, pharmacists, nurses, health insurance companies, and the rest of the usual suspects rarely do more than recommend that patients use pill organizers. After that, folks are on their own.

That’s probably a mistake.

In upcoming posts, I’ll be reviewing the sparse literature on the use of simple, non-electronic medication organizers, adding my own observations to the findings and recommendations. If I do my job correctly, this should be immediately useful to may patients.

Today’s post, however, is limited to this introduction and the following set of graphics that illustrate, just for grins, the wide world of pillboxes and medication organizers that are practical, decorative, emblematic, clever, cheap, costly, round, square, huge, tiny, and much, much more. Also included are various medication-associated accoutrements, such as pill splitters, reminders, medication logs, etc.) that are often marketed as part of a set, the centerpiece of which is a medication organizer.

And just in time for Christmas.

Credit Due Department: The bejeweled pillboxes shown above are from and shown here courtesy of Kristi Lyn Glass.

The How To Use Medication Organizers series of posts
is scheduled to begin within the next week.