“Protecting the pill:” Johns Hopkins students develop tamper-proof, biometric pill bottle

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Over the past few years, prescription drug abuse has been a heated topic here in the U.S. among healthcare professionals and policymakers alike. Engineering students within Johns Hopkins University’s Whiting School of Engineering are taking strides to address continuously alarming drug abuse statistics with the creation of a novel, tamper-proof pill bottle.

As cited in HIStalk Connect’s article, the engineering students were called upon by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health to undertake this special project. With more than 16,000 annual deaths attributed to prescription drug-related overdoses, the goal of Hopkins’ project was to develop a robust pill bottle that would help control the nation’s relatively unsecured supply of prescription narcotics. According to assistant professor at the Bloomberg School of Public Health, Kavi Bhalla, the overseeing team wanted “this personal pill ‘safe’ to have tamper resistance, personal identification capabilities and a locking mechanism that allows only a pharmacist to load the device with pills.”

The four engineering undergrads assigned to take on this project answered accordingly–by developing a 2.75 pound, nine-inch-tall, steel-constructed pill bottle that can withstand any hammer or drill activity. Additionally, fingerprint scanners are used to regulate dispensing and ensure that pills are only released to the patient a medication is prescribed to–at proper time intervals and in correct doses. After gaining positive feedback from both Bloomberg clinicians and pharmacists at the on-campus Rite Aid, Hopkins engineering students uncovered an important and overlooked design value: the ability to record medication adherence rates. If connected to a monitoring system, the tamper-proof pill bottle (again, equipped with fingerprint reading capabilities) could eventually be useful to payers and health systems working to reduce funds wasted on poor medication adherence.

For healthcare software companies looking to incorporate the ability to electronically prescribe controlled substances (EPCS), DoseSpot could be your solution of choice in just a few hours, days or weeks! Through our third party EPCS audit with Drummond Group Inc., a global software test and certification body that is approved by the Drug Enforcement Administration to audit EPCS software applications, DoseSpot is now able to deliver audited and trusted EPCS software applications to customers. For more information on DoseSpot’s EPCS software, please download our Integration Tool Kit here!

SOURCE: HIStalk

About DoseSpot 
DoseSpot is a Surescripts certified e-Prescribing platform specifically designed to integrate with electronic health record, electronic dental record, practice management and telehealth software. DoseSpot is certified to e-Prescribe controlled substances and has provided simple, affordable and integratable e-Prescribing solutions to healthcare IT companies since 2009. For more information, please visit http://www.DoseSpot.com.

Prescription Drug Monitoring? There’s an App for That

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Earlier this week, New Jersey’s Division of Consumer Affairs announced the launch of a new iPhone app that will allow authorized users of the state’s prescription drug monitoring program—namely pharmacists and prescribers licensed in New Jersey—to access the crucial database via their smartphone or tablet. The New Jersey Prescription Drug Monitoring Program (NJPMP) operates under the Division of Consumer Affairs and this state department is also responsible for managing and updating the prescription drug database.

The NJPMP collects data on prescriptions for controlled substances filled in the state of New Jersey, including opiate painkillers and a variety of narcotics. Prescribers can conveniently use the database to locate patients who may be “doctor shopping,” which the NJPMP defines as “deceptively visiting multiple physicians to obtain more prescription drugs than [a single doctor] would prescribe” or “trying to illegally obtain prescription drugs through use of multiple pharmacies.”

Officially launching in the year 2011, the NJPMP views this new iPhone app as the latest in a recurring series of upgrades that the Program has laid out for the coming months. A major goal, according to acting Attorney general John J. Hoffman, is to make the NJPMP as user-friendly as possible—thus increasing adoption rates among prescribers and pharmacists, whose participation in actively addressing prescription drug abuse is critical.

According to the NJPMP, 88.4% of the state’s 29,400 licensed prescribers are registered to use the NJPMP and between March and April of 2015, 169,000 user requests were submitted. The app is currently only available for iPhones and iPads, however, the NJPMP plans to launch both Android and Windows apps by the summer.

For more information on the New Jersey Prescription Drug Monitoring Program, check out a brief released by the Department of Consumer Affairs here!

SOURCE: mobihealthnews 

About DoseSpot 
DoseSpot is a Surescripts certified e-Prescribing platform specifically designed to integrate with electronic health record, electronic dental record, practice management and telehealth software. DoseSpot is certified to e-Prescribe controlled substances and has provided simple, affordable and integratable e-Prescribing solutions to healthcare IT companies since 2009. For more information, please visit www.DoseSpot.com.