Читать книгу The Future of Health - Roberto Ascione - Страница 12

Proteus Digital Health, an American company founded in 2001 with headquarters in Redwood City, California, had set itself an ambitious goal: to design and create “digital” drugs. To achieve this, it concentrated on developing products, services, and data systems based on the integration of ingestible drugs and cloud computing. In early 2017, in collaboration with Otsuka Pharmaceutical, Proteus developed a pill called Abilify MyCite, which incorporates a microsensor containing copper, silicon, and magnesium. The sensor is about the size of a grain of sand and is seamlessly eliminated through the digestive track. It was the first digital pill to receive the approval of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the American authority that regulates new drugs and medical treatments. Abilify MyCite is an antipsychotic product based on aripiprazole, a molecule used in the treatment of bipolar disorders and schizophrenia. The digital version developed by Proteus contains a sensor activated by gastric acids in the stomach that sends a message to a patch applied to the patient's skin. The message is in turn sent to a smartphone. This data can be accessed, with consent, by the patient's health-care professional, family members, or even by friends. It is no coincidence that the first application of the digital pill concerns mental illness, where failure to adhere to treatment is often a serious problem. According to experts, non-adherence to prescribed treatments (i.e., not taking medicines or not taking the right amount) would cost, in the United States alone, between $100 and $300 billion per year.

Despite the huge need for adherence solutions and Proteus's level of innovation, this solution never scaled, probably because it was ahead of its time in the context of the health-care industry. In mid-2020 Otsuka ended up acquiring Proteus, so perhaps full integration with a pharmaceutical company will allow this technology to be more broadly available to patients and doctors.