In a recent post I looked at a new mobile service that aims to make taking the contraceptive pill easier.  The device, called Pillsy, provides a smart pouch and smartphone app that helps to remind women to take the pill each day.

The pouch synchronizes with the phone via bluetooth, and users place their pill sheet inside the pouch to receive reminders on their phone at their preferred time each day.

The pouch is able to detect whether a pill has been taken each day, and will provide a series of reminders up until the point that the pill is taken.

Understanding your medicine

Of course, the contraceptive pill is far from the only medicine many of us are required to take, and it can often be difficult to get your head around the complicated medicine regimes we’ve been given by our doctors.

Medical adherence is a significant problem in healthcare, with one study suggesting that as many as 40 percent of patients fail to adhere to the regime they’ve been given.

Understanding which pill is which, and when to take each of them, can be a real challenge.  A new mobile app called TruScan is hoping to provide some assistance.

The device aims to help patients to identify the pills they have and will send an audible message to their smartphone to ensure they take the right one each day.

The app utilizes cloud based image recognition to identify each pill, before then using the TruSpeak feature that the company have developed to enable information about the pill to be read out loud to the patient.

If an audible description isn’t to their fancy, the patient can also get the information sent to them visually in large text via their phone.

The information is designed to provide everything the patient could require about that pill, including the name and strength of the drug, but also things like any safety information or the expiry date of the medicine.

At the moment the information is available in over 50 languages, and whilst it does require the patient to be sufficiently equipped to use their phone in this way, it’s a nice way of ensuring patients take the right medicine.