Published on August 28, 2009 at 2:28 AM
“Building on our Phase I achievements, we will design and deploy a handheld, breath-based medication adherence device,” reports Dr. Donn Dennis, project Co-investigator and CSO for Xhale. “The system will first remind the patient to take their medication. After ingesting their medication, the patient will blow into the device which will detect and document that the appropriate medication was taken at the proper time. This technology should improve adherence rates, especially in high-risk populations, and provide pharmaceutical companies and the FDA with a higher quality data set for evaluating drug safety and efficacy in clinical trials.”
The New England Healthcare Institute (NEHI) in its August 2009 report noted that poor medication adherence costs the U.S. as much as $290 billion annually (13% of total health care expenditures), and affects virtually every aspect of the health care system. Besides an estimated $47 billion each year for drug-related hospitalizations, not taking medications as prescribed has been associated with as many as 40% of admissions to nursing homes and with an additional $2,000 a year per patient in medical costs for visits to physicians' offices.
This is the third time in two years that Xhale has been awarded an SBIR grant. Previous awards were SBIR Phase I awards from the National Institute of Mental Health and the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.
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