Prescription drug abuse is growing at epidemic proportions. The statistics demand an outcry when middle and high school children are included. According to the 2003 National Survey on Drug Use and Health, 6.3 million Americans age 12 and older currently use prescription drugs for non-medical purposes.  Stated, simply, the ability to get and sell dangerous prescription drugs has become too easy in our society. Too many Americans have disabling conditions requiring the need for oral medication, but we have miserably failed to prevent epidemic abuse. Unfortunately, it requires visual evidence to terminate prescribing dangerous oral medications to specific individuals who abuse and misuse. The number of patients with documented chronic pain grows every day, and treatment, many times requires prescribing dangerous narcotics on chronic basis. Because most of these patients have lost employment because of their medical condition, it has become too easy to supplement lost income selling their medications illegally, off the street.

According to Dr. McEldowney, an orthopedic surgeon and co-founder of RAMM Technologies, “Every week I have at least one patient admit to me that they experienced enough pain from an orthopedic condition, usually from the lower back, to purchase an illegal narcotic. Most required the medication to either work or sleep. So we have the ultimate irony — good hard working Americans with real, painful conditions buying overpriced narcotics off the street from others who fake a condition to get a prescription to sell.” America seems to be granting a number of street physician and pharmacy degrees; a number that seems to be growing at alarming rates. So we have a huge problem that costs Americans millions/billions of dollars, and at present, there is no solution on the market.

The PillSafety medicine dispenser will address the prescription drug abuse problem by allowing doses of dangerous drugs only at carefully regulated times.  Controlling the time of delivery for addictive medication will deter over dosage and criminal action.  Although PillSafety may not eliminate our prescription abuse problem, it can deter a large percentage of illegal temptations.  With more assurance that the patient will not take their pills more frequently than prescribed or sell them all on the street, physicians can be more willing to prescribe these highly addictive medications when they will improve the patient’s health.