Dude, It's Time To Take Your MedicineDude, It's Time To Take Your Medicine

Hypertension patients participating in a new telemedicine drug study will soon be seeing glowing colors. No, the changing hues aren't a side effect of the medicine, but rather a reminder for high-blood pressure patients to take their daily pills.

Partners Telemedicine is testing a new technology configuration that includes a smart pillbox, an orb light that changes colors, and wireless applications to study whether subtle visual reminders help patients improve compliance to their drug regimes.

Hypertension is a big problem with serious potential complications, says Dr. Joseph Kvedar, director of Partners Telemedicine, a division of Partners Healthcare, a Boston-area health care company that operates Massachusetts General and Brigham and Women's hospitals.

In fact, a recent World Health Organization report found that half of all people who have chronic illnesses fail to take their medications as prescribed, with a quarter of patients saying it's because they forget.

The new Partners telemedicine study aims to evaluate if patients better adhere to drug instructions when they're prompted by a non-clinical-looking reminder, in this case a frosted globe light the size of a baseball that changes from green to red when it's pill time.

"The idea is to bring better health care into the home without moving in the doctor's office," Kvedar says. "The purpose of the study is to understand if unobtrusive and simple-to-use technology can change behavior in a positive way that people can stick with."

The six-month study involves 50 to 70 Boston-area patients who will participate for three months without the glowing reminder, and three months with prompts from the Ambient Orb. The orb, manufactured by Ambient Devices, was originally created several years ago as a consumer product to track the performance of the stock market. The company is allowing its use to be adapted for other applications, including health care, says Andrew Needleman, managing partner of Claricode, a software vendors that's involved in the Partners study.

For the study, Claricode developed applications that tie the Smart PillBox from SIMPill to the Ambient Orb. When the Smart PillBox is opened, it wirelessly sends an SMS text-message signal to a central application via Partners' remote paging system. The central application on the server then sends a message for the orb to turn from red to green once the patient has taken the pill. The system is programmed to send a message to the orb to turn red in the wee hours of the morning so that patients are reminded to take their medicine when they wake up.

In addition to patients having the orb light reminder in their homes, caretakers such as the adult children of elderly patients can have orb lights in their offices or homes to monitor whether their parents have taken their pills.

Other than having the orb plugged into an electrical outlet and opening and closing the Smart PillBox, patients don't have to adapt to any of the technology involved, says Needleman.

"It's very important that patients feel connected to their doctors, but we've also found that patients want to feel more ownership about their care," says Dr. David Judge, a physician with Bullfinch Medical Group, a Boston-area physician practice that's helping to recruit patients for the study.

While the Partners study is studying only hypertension patients who take one pill daily, the orb can be programmed to turn other colors to remind patients to take other pills.