How good are you with taking your meds? We all can probably admit that from time to time, we might forget to complete our course of antibiotics, or there is a daily pill that we’re meant to ingest but somehow we forget. This is normal, but it is also not good especially if those pills are crucial to maintaining your health.
However it seems that a solution has been found. Developed by a company called Lyndra, it seems that they have created a pill that when swallowed can expand in your stomach like in the image pictured above. The idea is that once it has expanded, it won’t pass through your system for up to 7-10 days. Throughout those days, the medicine in the pill will be slowly released, meaning that you don’t have to worry about remembering to take your meds since it is being done for you.
The pills will eventually be dissolved by your stomach’s acids, but hopefully by then the medicine will have completed its course. Right now the pill has proven to be successful when used in pigs, although this also means that it might be a while before it is deemed to be safe for human consumption.
Lyndra’s co-founder, Amy Schulman, has said that it is estimated that 50% of patients in the developed world don’t take their meds as prescribed. Apparently this costs the US healthcare system over $100 billion annually, so with this pill, hopefully these problems can be solved.