The first drug with a sensor embedded in a pill that alerts doctors when patients have taken their medications has been given a thumbs-up by the Food and Drug Administration, and it will likely raise a host of issues involving privacy, cost, and whether patients really want caregivers looking over their shoulders.
The digital pill approved late Monday allows Japan’s Otsuka Pharmaceutical Co. to insert a tiny chip — the size of a grain of sand — inside the psychiatric medication Abilify used to treat schizophrenia and other serious mental illness.