Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
International Congress on Advanced Research and Applications, Sivas, Türkiye, 1 - 02 Aralık 2023, ss.85
EVALUATION OF DIGITAL PILLS IN TERMS OF TREATMENT AND ETHICS
ABSTRACT
Biosensors have been successfully applied for disease identification, prevention, rehabilitation, patient
health surveillance and human health management. The latest developments of biosensors in the field
of health include ingestible digital pills. Digital Pills are an innovative drug-device technology that
allows combining traditional medications with a monitoring system that automatically records patients'
physiological data as well as data on medication compliance. Lack of data such as the dose and
frequency of patients' use of conventional drugs during the treatment process negatively affects the
physician's treatment management. With the data obtained from digital medicines, healthcare
professionals provide information about whether the patient is taking the medicines, the dose taken and
the duration of treatment. In this way, unnecessary health expenses and abuse of drugs such as opioids
are prevented. The world's first ingestible digital medicine with an embedded biosensor to track its use
has been approved in the United States. However, such practices, especially towards vulnerable
populations, have also brought about ethical problems. Additionally, the risk of data privacy breach is a
concern factor with such technologies. Therefore, clinical studies have begun to be conducted on these
controversial drugs. Studies demonstrating improvements in drug efficacy and health outcomes have
increased the reliability of these systems. In this study, it is aimed to give the current status of the
technology, current usage areas, ethical evaluations and clinical studies of ingestible digital pills.
Scientific articles published in the last decade about biosensors and ingestible digital pills and the
ClinicalTrials.gov database were examined and evaluated. It was concluded that more studies are needed
on the efficacy, safety and use of digital pills.
Keywords: Digital pills, biosensors, healthcare systems, ethical concerns, clinical trials.