AT&T Service for Your Pill Bottle

January 5, 2011 at 12:00 am PT

Cellphone technology is making its way into more places — and now it’s coming to pill bottles.

AT&T Inc. is offering its service in products called GlowCaps, which are designed to help people remember to take their medication. The caps send data to their manufacturer, Vitality Inc., whenever the user opens the bottle, and this information can be communicated to the patient’s doctor or family members. The caps also remind the user to take the medicine, by flashing a light and playing a ringtone on a device that plugs into the wall; they can call the user’s phone as a reminder and automatically order refills from the pharmacy.

The caps are aimed at getting people to take medications as prescribed — regularly and at the right time. It can be a big problem for people with chronic illnesses, and for the doctors and insurers who want to make sure they don’t get sicker.

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Tagged with: AT&T, cellphones, digital, Digits, frontpage, GlowCaps, Jennifer Valentino-DeVries, medications, prescriptions, software, telecom, The Wall Street Journal, Vitality Inc.

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