Drug monitoring cap from AARDEX

AARDEX Ltd may be the company with the most experience in on-time monitoring solutions. It was established in 1995. In 1999, it was responsible for the acquisition of Aprexü  mirrors. 5. 腁ARDEX Ltd. acquired the company. Dr. Jean-Michel Metry, chairman and chief executive officer of Aprexā?AARDEX, explained: "In 1986 and 1987, two practical medication monitoring methods were developed, that is, electronic monitoring and low-dose, slowly-changing electronic doses. Chemical labels are incorporated. Although both methods have limitations, they have made great progress in understanding patient compliance and compliance.

"Both methods have shown that the main cause of failure to take the medication is negligence, that is, delay or missed medication. The labeling method can confirm the dose taken by the patient within the first three to seven days of the blood sampling, but it cannot be shown. Time, and electronic monitoring methods, that is, incorporating time and date information into the drug package through microcircuits, can provide continuous record of intake time over many months, but it cannot confirm the ingestion dose."

AARDEX's electronic monitoring solution, the "Medicine Surveillance System" (MEMS) is a bottle cap that was introduced in 1987. Several standard calibers are available in 38, 42 and 45 mm diameters, and are used on vials with a bottle-lined pattern and sizes of 38/400, 42/400 and 45/400, respectively. The drug monitoring system cap incorporates a microelectronic circuit to register and store data when the cap is opened and closed.

The MEMS 6 TrackCap is manufactured by Indtec SA of Switzerland. Its battery life is within 36 months from the initialization and is initialized before the product is shipped. Metry said: "In the past, initialization was done during production, which limited the useful life of the monitor." The system collects all medication information stored in a read-only memory (EEPROM) so that even if the battery fails, it has been All stored data is saved for reading and analysis and can be stored for at least 10 years. The monitor has storage capacity, initially 3,968 times, decreasing 150 times a year (eg, 3,818 after 12 months, 3,668 after 24 months, etc.)

The MEMS 6 SmartCap offers the same functionality as the TrackCap, but the battery life is 18 months. It also contains a liquid crystal display indicating the number of times the package has been opened after each day. The 12 bars in a circle around the center number show the number of hours that have elapsed since the last time it was turned on.

In order to transfer the record of medication time stored in the MEMS 6 cap, the user places the system on the MEMS 6 communicator device, which is a reader directly connected to a computer with Windows installed. Download the data into the company's PowerView software. PowerView stores the data in a database, calculates the result and displays or prints the report. According to AARDEX, this software provides several views of the history of doses to help users quickly identify vital dose errors. Medication information can also be downloaded directly to a secure website.

AARDEX mentioned that Pfizer, Sanofi-Aventis, and Bristol-Myers Squibb already use MEMS caps.

Another service offered by AARDEX is Short Message Service (SMS) support, which reminds patients to take medication on time by sending a message to the patient's mobile phone.

Source: Packaging Digest China