Individuals with serious mental illness often struggle with medication compliance, increasing the likelihood of relapse of serious and life-threatening symptoms and psychiatric hospitalizations. Physicians often face challenges if compliance is in question when determining the efficacy of medications. A new prescription digital therapeutics ingestible sensor is providing a needed service for psychiatric populations with serious mental illness using a digital medication adherence tool—Aripiprazole iDAS (Richey et al., 2022). It has been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to track patient ingestion of the antipsychotic medication Aripiprazole, known by the brand name Abilify. While other ingestible sensors have been released for other medication adherence populations, this FDA-approved, prescription digital therapeutics system is one of the first to be marketed in the behavioral arena.
Using an ingestible sensor combined with the oral form of Aripiprazole, this prescription digital therapeutics system records when the patient takes the medication. The sensor works by transmitting a transient local signal to a patch the patient wears on their torso, which transmits a signal to a paired smartphone app. With the patient’s consent, the app can track medication adherence and other important data significant to individuals with serious mental illness, such as the patient’s mood, activity, and resting time.
Data Types & Associated Benefits of Prescription Digital Therapeutics
This FDA-approved prescription digital therapeutics tool provides information that reveals the following:
- Longstanding patterns of adherence to medication that is available for both the patient and their prescriber
- Useful data that can help patients and their prescribers develop realistic options for medication adherence
- Methods to develop discussions on treatment options for serious mental illness
- Methods to decrease appointment time are dedicated to investigating whether the patient is in compliance with medication and instead use this time to brainstorm reasons and develop solutions for non-adherence.
The benefits of this prescription digital therapeutics tool include…
