The first affordable and easy-to-use IoT system that tracks pill intake with printed circuits technology

Project Information

SIGUEMED

Grant agreement ID: 877113

DOI

10.3030/877113

Project closed

EC signature date 18 July 2019

Start date 1 August 2019

End date 31 January 2020

Funded under

• INDUSTRIAL LEADERSHIP - Innovation In SMEs

Total cost

€ 71 429,00

EU contribution

€ 50 000,00

Coordinated by

INFARMATE ATENCION FARMACEUTICA DOMICILIARIA SL
Spain

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - SIGUEMED (The first affordable and easy-to-use IoT system that tracks pill intake with printed circuits technology)

Reporting period: 2019-08-01 to 2020-01-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Non-adherence to medication of chronic poly-medicated patients is an unsolved global problem, which affects the EU, reaching, in some countries, levels over 50%. Its consequences in Europe are of 200,000 premature deaths per year and an annual cost of 125,000 M€.
Current solutions are either only partial or unaffordable:
• Personalized blister packs that group pills per day and intake time in wells, which are prepared weekly by the pharmacists, are not useful to check if and when patients actually take the pills.
• Smartphone apps that trigger alarms to remind about the medication schedule have low acceptance among the elderly.
In INFARMATE, we are pharmacists with more than 20 years of experience. As such, we have been able to spot a market gap for a practical, user-friendly and cost-effective product that increases the medical adherence by reminding the patient the medication intake schedule and monitoring if and when the pills intake happens: SIGUEMED.
SIGUEMED is an IoT eHealth solution that helps poly-medicated chronic patients to enhance their medical adherence by monitoring and tracking their real pill intake in real-time basis. It consists on a smart blister pack attached to a base dock with embedded connectivity, which sends beep signals to wearables at intake time to remind the patient about it. The base dock communicates with a SW platform, to register if and when pills intake take place. In case of non-compliance, it will send non-intake alerts to the people assigned as contact person (either through a pop-up if they have installed the App, or through an SMS). In addition, it provides monthly reports of the patients’ adherence (useful for pharmacists/doctors).
The ultimate aim of the SIGUEMED project is to validate the current technology and up-scale its production process in order to scale up both QUINNOVA products into the market.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

During the SME-Instrument Phase I (August 2019-January 2020) we have conducted a feasibility study to analyse our project’s technical, commercial and financial viability.
From a technical point of view, we have (i) defined the final design of the base dock, (ii) defined the integration between the sealing foil with the electronic circuits and the blister itself to develop SIGUEMED’s smart blister pack, (iii) manufactured 3 units of the base dock and 18 units of the smart blister pack and analysed their correct performance and interaction, (iv) defined and optimised connection with wearables and digital available home assistants and (v) assessed the possibility of including light signals.
From a commercial point of view, we have (i) conducted a deep study of SIGUEMED’s market – the medication adherence enhancement market, (ii) analysed our target clients - the EU’s pharmacy sector, which has led us to identify our target countries and to design our entry strategy for each of them by identifying the main pharmaceutical distributors (iii) characterised our end-users – chronic polymedicated elderly patients, and (iv) decided to wait until the final commercial design of the SIGUEMED components to conduct a patentability analysis.
From a financial point of view, we have (i) elaborated a business plan, including the definition of our manufacturing and commercialisation strategies and a human resources plan, (ii) carried out an updated financial forecast, where we have determined the main tasks to reach SIGUEMED’s market readiness, defined our pricing strategies and updated our financial projections for the 2022-206 period considering the number of potential users and keeping it financially interesting for the company and (iii) conducted a detailed risk analysis including mitigation measures and contingency plans.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

Non-adherence to medication is an acknowledged issue of today’s society. Thus, there have already been different attempts to solve the problem.
On the one hand, the most extended solution are blister packs, which are personalised blisters prepared by pharmacists, in which the pills each patient needs are grouped in different wells per day and intake time. This way, the patient doesn’t need to select the different pills from the different packages. However, this solution is not aimed at fostering and monitoring medical adherences, just at avoiding confusion on each intake.
On the other hand, there are different apps (e.g. SureMed) designed to remind through alerts intake time. This way it is more difficult to forget about an intake. However, apps can’t monitor if the intake did take place and the moment.
SIGUEMED doesn’t just provide a system to avoid confusion upon intake but also reminds and monitors each intake. This monitoring is translated into monthly adherence reports which, at the same time, provide a valuable source of information for pharmacists and physicians. We estimate that, with SIGUEMED, an average pharmacy will perceive around 10,000€
In addition, SIGUEMED is especially user-friendly, even for digital immigrants, as it is prepared by pharmacists, patients don’t need to take any action, just receive the intake alerts.
With SIGUEMED we intend to enhance medical adherence in the EU, therefore reducing avoidable hospitalisation and medicinal costs and, ultimately, reducing the number of deaths related to not taking medications as prescribed.

SIGUEMED Prototypes