A novel electronic pillbox prompts TB patients to take their antibiotics regularly, and could identify those who don鈥檛.
Failure to complete a course of antibiotics leads to multi-drug resistant TB strains, so the World Health Organization advocates that health workers watch patients take each dose. With 9 million new cases each year, workers need to spot the patients prone to such lapses so that efforts are focused where most needed.
Created by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the 鈥渦Box鈥� will be given to 100 TB patients in Bihar, India, this year. A memory chip records when the pillbox lid is opened, while a timed buzzer and flashing LEDs remind patients to take their pills. At the end of an antibiotics course, the researchers download the data from the boxes to identify backsliders.
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