Due to aging populations, the number of patients who are prescribed several drugs at the same time is increasing. In addition, the need for personal visits to doctor’s offices is declining as patients increasingly receive digital care and home deliveries of their medicines. However, the often complex medication plans do not always make it easy for patients to precisely adhere to them. To physicians, adherence monitoring poses an even greater challenge. The Smart Blister Card from Schreiner MediPharm can help resolve those issues.

In our aging societies, many people need to regularly take not just one but several medicines at different times of the day. That is the case in most industrial nations and the older people become the more drugs are added. Yet many patients and their families underestimate that polypharmacy, i.e. the permanent therapy involving several medications, may entail major risks. According to estimates, wrong parallel intake of different medicines causes up to 25,000 deaths in Germany alone. That risk increases especially when medication intake cannot be monitored by healthcare professionals—for instance when elderly patients take their medicines independently at home or receive in-home care by relatives.

In the case of polypharmaceutical applications, the medicines are frequently filled into standard blister packs according to the individual medication plan by hospital and large pharmacies. That eases the patients’ burden because the drugs are packaged in accordance with the dosage regimen. However, the attending physician or pharmacy have no way of tracking when the patient has taken the medications. That is possible with Schreiner MediPharm’s Smart Blister Card because it extends the standard blister pack by digital medication adherence monitoring of the patient. The conductive lines contained in the Smart Blister Card combined with an electronic unit enable automatic tracking as soon as the patient pushes tablets out of a cavity. That generates data in real time such as the time of removal, the dose, or the respective cavity. The data is stored in the Smart Blister Card and transmitted to a database via a smartphone app or a reader using NFC or Bluetooth technology.

At the same time, the application of the Smart Blister Card is a convenient and flexible procedure for physicians and pharmacists. After filling and sealing the blister pack, the Smart Blister Card is simply attached to the back of the pack without impairing the filling process in the polypharmaceutical application. The technology can be inconspicuously integrated into the packaging design, precisely adapted to the respective application, and is suitable for nearly all existing multi-dose and single-dose blister packs. Thanks to the transparent film with the conductive lines, the marking of each individual cavity concerning the medication it contains remains clearly visible. In addition, a temperature monitoring feature for sensitive active ingredients is an available option. Patients themselves do not need to do anything else than take their tablets as usual: With the Smart Blister Card, the cavities can be pushed through as easily as before. Smartphone apps provide patients with digital self-monitoring support of intake times and even enable a reminder function to comply with their medication plan. Thus, the risks of polypharmacy can be reduced and therapeutic success be enhanced.