E Ink, HTC and Palladio collaborate to develop smart packaging label

 

E Ink Holdings, a leading innovator of electronic ink technology, the direct patient care service provider of data science HTC Healthcare (both based in Taiwan) and the Italian pharmaceutical packaging company Palladio Group announced a collaboration to improve medication adherence by harnessing the healthcare segment of the Internet of Things (IoT).

Medication nonadherence is a common, complex and costly problem that contributes to poor patient outcomes and dwindling healthcare resources. Nonadherence is difficult to measure precisely and, to date, interventions to mitigate it have been largely unsuccessful. Using smartphone applications together with IoT-based smart devices provides a new approach to improving medication adherence.

To combat this prevalent problem, E Ink created a smartphone-based smart packaging label that displays personalised content that can be pushed to the packaging label as a communication interface, delivering vital information to patients and creating a gateway to improve patient engagement. With E Ink’s low power, high contrast paper-like display technology, patients can receive information, including:

• A reminder that it’s time for users to take their medication
• The quantity of medication in the package
• The time at which medication is taken

Further, patients have the ability to provide refill service by simply pushing a button on the product label. “E Ink’s smart packaging label can be applied on both primary and secondary containers, from paperboard cartons to prefilled syringes to pill dispensers,” said Dr FY Gan, general manager of ESI Business Unit of E Ink Holdings. “This readily available technology offers many features designed to help patients and healthcare providers improve medication-taking behaviors.”

Developing a privacy-preserving medication management software, HTC enables real-time medication consumption tracking, symptom and side effects disclosure, and treatment outcome evaluation. Patients are able to get detailed information about their health status via two-way communication with the care team (composed of physicians, case managers, and pharmacists) and to refill their prescription via the platform. Dr Edward Chang, president of HTC Healthcare, said “Our artificial intelligence technology is the backbone of the platform, aiming to improve treatment effectiveness and, eventually, a personalised medication solution in the near future.”

Mauro Marchi, CEO of Palladio Group, adds, “As a packaging and services provider fully dedicated to the pharmaceutical industry, we are committed to developing the most successful applications with our partners. PhutureMed is an example of a programme that has been conceived with the main objective of creating innovative packaging solutions for the medicine of the future. It’s an intelligent packaging system designed to support patients in monitoring and complying with their medicine regimes.”