Abstract
Glaucoma, the leading cause of irreversible blindness, affects >70 million people worldwide. Lowering intraocular pressure via topical administration of eye drops is the most common first-line therapy for glaucoma. This treatment paradigm has notoriously high non-adherence rates: ranging from 30% to 80%. The advent of smart phone enabled technologies creates promise for improving eyedrop adherence. However, previous eyedrop electronic monitoring solutions had awkward medication bottle adjuncts and crude software for monitoring the administration of a drop that adversely affected their ability to foster sustainable improvements in adherence. The current work begins to address this unmet need for wireless technology by creating a “smart drop” bottle. This medication bottle is instrumented with sensing electronics that enable detection of each eyedrop administered while maintaining the shape and size of the bottle. This is achieved by a thin electronic force sensor wrapped around the bottle and underneath the label, interfaced with a thin electronic circuit underneath the bottle that allows for detection and wireless transmission to a smart-phone application. We demonstrate 100% success rate of wireless communication over 75 feet with <1% false positive and false negative rates of single drop deliveries, thus providing a viable solution for eyedrop monitoring for glaucoma patients.
Highlights
Reduced adherence with prescribed systemic and topical medications for treating chronic illness has long been identified as a key obstacle to delivering successful treatment.As the World Health Organization (WHO) has declared, “Increasing the effectiveness of adherence interventions may have a far greater impact on the health of the population than any improvement in specific medical treatments” [1].Reduced adherence is a problematic issue for the management of glaucoma, a chronic neurodegenerative eye disease that is the leading cause of irreversible blindness globally, projected to affect more than 80 million people worldwide [2,3]
Sensors 2020, 20, 2570 widely employed first line therapy is achieved by topical administration of a series of eye drops to reduce intraocular pressure (IOP) [5,6,7]
This system builds upon recently demonstrated multi-functional uses of thin and flexible electronics for medical monitoring [27,28], which in this case address the key unmet need of measuring glaucoma eyedrop adherence in a manner that does not alter the shape or size of the bottle
Summary
Reduced adherence with prescribed systemic and topical medications (such as eyedrops) for treating chronic illness has long been identified as a key obstacle to delivering successful treatment.As the World Health Organization (WHO) has declared, “Increasing the effectiveness of adherence interventions may have a far greater impact on the health of the population than any improvement in specific medical treatments” [1].Reduced adherence is a problematic issue for the management of glaucoma, a chronic neurodegenerative eye disease that is the leading cause of irreversible blindness globally, projected to affect more than 80 million people worldwide [2,3]. Reduced adherence with prescribed systemic and topical medications (such as eyedrops) for treating chronic illness has long been identified as a key obstacle to delivering successful treatment. Lowering intraocular pressure (IOP) is the only proven method of delaying both the development and progression of glaucoma [4]. Sensors 2020, 20, 2570 widely employed first line therapy is achieved by topical administration of a series of eye drops to reduce intraocular pressure (IOP) [5,6,7]. Patients need to administer eye drops daily, often multiple times, and more than one half of patients administer more than one type of eye drop. With an often bewildering regimen of eye drop use, it is not surprising that adherence with eye drops ranges from
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