Cape Town-based company SIMpill and telecoms partner Tellumat Communications have developed a solution which will monitor and remind patients with chronic conditions to take their medication as prescribed, as well as enable health organisations to be more efficient and cost-effective in their patient care.

A pill bottle which, when opened, delivers an SMS text message to a central server. The SMS contains a unique pill box ID number as well as some information about the battery status of the pill box. Each SMS is time stamped.

The central server receives the incoming SMS and, if it is within the time tolerances set for the pill box sending the message is simply stored for statistical purposes.

Should no message be received within the time tolerances then the server can be set to produce a number of responses, e.g.

• sending a text message reminder to the patient's handset
• sending a text message prompt to a family member or community based care giver
• prompting them to visit the patient to ascertain the cause of non-compliance and provide assistance
• sending a text message to a clinic based health professional or any other user determined response)
• or indeed escalate through these responses as time elapses with no incoming message in response to the previous outgoing message.

Data on levels of compliance as measured by the device are stored for future analysis and use.

Read