What is the PillSafe?

The Pill Safe is a novel design for a tamper-resistant prescription container. In the safe, drug tablets are stacked next to a stable reactant that can destroy the drugs, and attempts to force the mechanism or penetrate the bottle cause their instant destruction. The Pill Safe offers a second line of defense against the illicit distribution of dangerous prescription drugs.

The medicine dispenser was designed to satisfy three main regulatory concerns: clinical, pharmaceutical and packaging. From the clinical aspect, it was necessary that the residue from the triggered medicine dispenser was completely destroyed and inedible. From the pharmaceutical aspect, drug tablets stacked next to reactants needed to be stable over time, not subject to chemical degradation in the presence of the reactants. And lastly, the packaging for the medicine dispenser needed to be safe and inaccessible to those for whom the medicine is not intended. It was also designed so the reaction that destroys the pills is brief in duration and contained in an insulating vessel, so there is no danger to persons or property.

To promote the nation's health, research is needed to understand the factors contributing to prescription drug abuse, to characterize the adverse medical, behavioral, and social consequences associated with this abuse, and to develop effective prevention and service delivery approaches and behavioral and pharmacological treatments. The PillSafe is part of research designed to study the relationship between the prescription medication, the indication for which the medication was prescribed (e.g., pain), and the environmental and individual factors contributing to abuse.

Why will PillSafe make more drugs available more safely to patients?

Currently, ethically minded physicians may fear they will incur regulatory scrutiny if they prescribe narcotic, and other regulated prescription medications. Given a new tool, the PillSafe, these physicians could become more helpful to the patients they serve. They would no longer feel compelled to "deprive" deserving patients the appropriate pain management medicine they really need.

Many states have severe prescription drug abuse problems. Manufacturers of pain-killing drugs like Purdue Pharma L.P., the Stamford, Connecticut-based distributor of OxyContin®, have been sued for merely distributing OxyContin® in the state. But patients need appropriate medical care, sometimes including good prescription medications selected by their doctors. Lawsuits such as these can interfere with the doctor-patient relationship to the extent that innocent pain sufferers are deprived of necessary medical care. Many patients say that they have had their lives taken away from them by conditions that can be relieved only through prescription medications as part of an overall treatment program.

Protecting legal pharmaceuticals from diversion will make more of them available to patients that need them.

Related prescription drug abuse prevention products

Measures have been implemented to protect pharmaceuticals and to prevent their illegal distribution. For example, electronically monitored narcotic cabinets and use of IDenticards (smart-card technology that can integrate electronic, magnetic stripe or barcode technologies and biometric readers to increase security) have reduced diversion of drugs from hospitals and pharmacies. But it is now time for a second line of defense, in the form of well-secured, better-regulated pill dispensing systems, to help prevent drug diversion from dispensed prescriptions. Companies have attempted to respond to this need, and e-pill has developed a Monitored Automatic Pill Dispenser (MD.2) that features voice alarms and reminders. To our knowledge, the MD.2 is the only automated vault-like delivery system on the market. At a high retail price, the cost of dispensing new MD.2 bottles with each monthly refill would be prohibitive. Therefore, the MD.2 comes with a lock and key, and it is the responsibility of the patient to refill their bottles. Potential thieves need only to obtain the key to pilfer the MD.2 contents or gain access to it long enough to cut through its outer shell. Thus, an opportunity lies in building an inexpensive and impenetrable container as a fail-safe, capable of scheduling and dispensing medications such as OxyContin®, and deterring those interested in obtaining the drugs purely for abuse and illicit purposes.

Publications about PillSafe

Joseph P. Medendorp, Jason A. Fackler, Tom Henninger, Bill Dieter, and Robert A. Lodder, NIR spectrometry for the characterization of fuel components in a novel tamper-resistant pill bottle, (HTML) Journal of Pharmaceutical Innovation, September/October 2006, pp. 54-61.