Catalia mention – Meet Your Robot Pharmacist
Zara Stone | September 11, 2016
Like many people, Peter Havas lives far from his parents. But while the San Francisco entrepreneur misses his mother and father in Australia, he doesn’t worry about their health. That’s because he’s pinged multiple times per day about their medication management and activity levels via an app connected to the PillDrill Wi-Fi health hub in their home. When the parents pop a pill, the system updates that the medication has been ingested and even registers their current state of mind with a scannable mood cube — a different emotion is pictured on five of the six sides to represent comfort levels and pain.
Havas, the founder of the company that manufactures the PillDrill, isn’t trying to be creepy; he’s trying to be cognizant of his parents’ health care — and stay ahead of trouble. In 2012, around 300,000 Americans called poison control hotlines after accidentally ingesting medications, according to the National Poison Control Center. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that half of people with chronic illnesses do not take the prescribed amount of meds. Naturally, this is concerning to people with aging parents, so a flock of startups has swooped in to help the 59 percent of American adults who take prescription medications.
