The United States has been battling a prescription painkiller epidemic for years. The statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are chilling: The number of painkillers prescribed has quadrupled since 1999; more than two million people abused painkillers in 2013; every day, 44 people die from a prescription opioid overdose.
In response, faculty at the Center for Injury Research and Policy at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health issued a challenge to seniors in the university's mechanical engineering program: build a pill bottle that would protect against theft and tampering.
One team of students came up with a design that worked so well that their team’s mentors Andrea Gielen, ScD, and Kavi Bhalla, PhD, submitted a proposal to the National Institutes of Health for further testing.
The device is about the size of a can of spray paint, much larger than the average pill bottle. It can only be opened with a special key, which pharmacists can use to refill with a month’s supply of OxyContin. A fingerprint sensor ensures only the prescribed patient can access the pills at prescribed intervals and doses. In a story on the Johns Hopkins website earlier this month, Megan Carney, one of the student engineers described how the pill dispenser works:
The device starts to work when the patient scans in his or her fingerprint. This rotates a disc, which picks up a pill from a loaded cartridge and empties it into the exit channel. The pill falls down the channel and lands on a platform where the patient can see that the pill has been dispensed. The patient then tilts the device and catches the pill in their hand.
A short video about the pill dispenser shows it in action, too. The dispenser still has to undergo additional testing, but the team hopes to bring it to market soon — and help prevent future opioid overdoses.
Previously: Unmet expectations: Testifying before Congress on the opioid abuse epidemic, The problem of prescription opioids: “An extraordinarily timely topic”, Assessing the opioid overdose epidemic, Why doctors prescribe opioids to patients they know are abusing them and Stanford addiction expert: It’s often a "subtle journey" from prescription-drug use to abuse
Photo courtesy of Johns Hopkins University
