SIMpill

SIMpill (Cape Town, South Africa) hasintroduced the SIMpill medication adherencesystem to the North American marketthrough a distribution agreement withClinical Technology Advisors (CTA) Inc(Acton, Mass). CTA's initial focus will bethe deployment of the SIMpill in the clinicaltrials and disease management environments.The patent-pending systemtracks, manages, and improves a patient'smedication adherence in real time. Thesystem consists of a durable, tamper-proofpill bottle attached to a SIMpill modulethat contains the components of a wirelessquad-band GSM/GPRS cell phone. Themodule is programmed with multiple timewindows based on the dosing schedule ofthe drug. When the patient opens the bottle,the module automatically sends ashort message service (SMS) text messageto a central computer system, indicatingthat a dose has been taken. If theSMS message is not received within thefirst programmed time window, an outgoingtext message is sent to the patient'scell phone (and/or e-mail), reminding thepatient to take the medication. If the bottleis not opened within the next programmedtime window, a text messagecan be sent to a designated caregiver orresearcher, who can then contact thepatient by another means. In addition, asSMS events are captured, approvedhealth care managers can track thepatients' medication adherence in realtime, using SIMpill's proprietary Web-basedreporting tool. For additional information,visit www.simpill.com orwww.simpilldirect.com.