BARCELONA, Spain--(BUSINESS WIRE)--E Ink® Holdings, "E Ink" (8069.TWO), the leading innovator of electronic ink technology in the world; HTC Healthcare, the direct patient care service provider of data science; and Palladio Group, the pioneering pharmaceutical secondary packaging company, today announced a collaboration to improve medication adherence by harnessing the healthcare segment of the Internet of Things (IoT).
Medication nonadherence is a common, complex and costly problem that contributes to poor patient outcomes and dwindling healthcare resources. Nonadherence is difficult to measure precisely and, to date, interventions to mitigate it have been largely unsuccessful. Using smartphone applications together with IoT-based smart devices provides a new approach to improving medication adherence.
To combat this prevalent problem, E Ink created a smartphone-based smart packaging label that displays personalized content that can be pushed to the packaging label as a communication interface, delivering vital information to patients and creating a gateway to improve patient engagement. With E Ink’s low power, high contrast paper-like display technology, patients can receive information, including:
- A reminder that it’s time for users to take their medication
- The quantity of medication in the package
- The time at which medication is taken
Further, patients have the ability to provide refill service by simply pushing a button on the product label.
“E Ink’s smart packaging label can be applied on both primary and secondary containers, from paperboard cartons to prefilled syringes to pill dispensers,” said Dr. FY Gan, General Manager of ESI Business Unit of E Ink Holdings. “This readily available technology offers many features designed to help patients and healthcare providers improve medication-taking behaviors.”
Developing a privacy-preserving medication management software, HTC enables real-time medication consumption tracking, symptom and side effects disclosure, and treatment outcome evaluation. Patients are able to get detailed information about their health status via two-way communication with the care team (composed of physicians, case managers, and pharmacists) and to refill their prescription via the platform. Dr. Edward Chang, president of HTC Healthcare, said “Our artificial intelligence technology is the backbone of the platform, aiming to improve treatment effectiveness and, eventually, a personalized medication solution in the near future.”
Mauro Marchi, CEO of Palladio Group, adds, “As a packaging and services provider fully dedicated to the pharmaceutical industry, we are committed to developing the most successful applications with our partners. PhutureMed™ is an example of a program that has been conceived with the main objective of creating innovative packaging solutions for the medicine of the future. It’s an intelligent packaging system designed to support patients in monitoring and complying with their medicine regimes.”
Connectivity, smart packaging and IoT enable physical products to generate, harvest and apply data flow throughout their lifecycle. The collaboration among E Ink, HTC and Palladio aims to provide an end-to-end digital integration service across the value chain for healthcare professionals. For example, medication nonadherence has been an emerging topic and a matter of concern in clinical research for pharmaceutical companies. Patient adherence can apply to several different clinical trial facets which may include adherence to study procedures, study visit compliance, medications and adverse event reporting. In fact, medication nonadherence during a clinical trial can result in increased clinical trial cost, as well as impacts to regulatory dosing recommendations upon medical product approval.
Information displayed includes barcode, QR code, multi-language text message and graphics. E Ink’s smart packaging label is compatible with many wireless communication protocols such as BLE, WiFi, ZigBee, etc.
The combination of HTC’s medication application software, Palladio’s packaging operation, and E Ink’s global platform of smart IoT device solutions will enhance patients’ understanding of medication information, empowering people to live better lives. It’s one of the reasons that PhutureMed has been named a finalist for this year’s CPhI Pharma Awards for Excellence in Pharma: Packaging. More information can be found here.
About E Ink Holdings
Founded in 1992 by Taiwan's leading
papermaking and printing group YFY (1907.TWSE), E Ink Holdings Inc.
(8069.TWO), based on technology from MIT’s Media Lab, has transformed
and defined the eReader market with its ePaper technology, enabling a
new multi-billion dollar market in less than 10 years. Its corporate
philosophy aims to deliver revolutionary products, user experiences, and
environmental benefits through advanced technology development. This
vision has led to its continuous investments in the field of ePaper
displays as well as expanding the use of its technologies into a number
of other markets and applications. Its EPD products make it the
worldwide leader for ePaper. Its FFS technologies are a standard for
high end consumer electronic products. Listed in Taiwan's Taipei
Exchange (TPEx) and the Luxembourg market, E Ink Holdings is now the
world's largest supplier of displays to the eReader market. For
corporate information, please visit www.einkgroup.com;
for EPD information, please visit www.eink.com.
About HTC Corporation
HTC Corp, founded in 1997,
manufactures smartphones and was ranked as a top brand in the world by Interbrand’s
Best Global Brands report. HTC brings brilliance to life by continuing
to create technology that can address society’s toughest challenges.
Since 2014, HTC has partnered with Taiwanese and US physicians,
scientists, and engineers who recognize the dire need for healthcare
improvement around the world. HTC is participating in the $10 million
Qualcomm Tricorder XPRIZE competition, which aims to foster disruptive
revolution in healthcare by stimulating the development of innovative
personal diagnostic devices. As of August 27, 2014, HTC was one of the
top 10 finalist teams in the competition. In 2015, HTC developed a new
healthcare business unit, to deliver direct patient care that includes a
symptom checker, a medication manager, and telehealth. HTC believes that
artificial intelligence can bring huge benefits to medical research and
aims to help clinicians provide faster, better treatments to their
patients by utilizing advanced technology to analyze accumulated medical
data.
About Palladio Group
Palladio Group is the result of a long
and successful process started in Italy, 70 years ago. Palladio is the
Leader for the Secondary Packaging Supplier and Service Provider for the
Healthcare and Cosmetic Industry in Italy and one of the most
interesting and dynamic companies in the International market. With its
plants located in Italy, Ireland, Serbia, and Russia (opening soon)
produce folding cartons, leaflets, booklets, labels and printed alu-foil
for the largest pharma and cosmetic companies worldwide. Palladio is
continually making a constant effort to improve, by offering innovative
technological solutions and advanced concepts and services towards
patient compliance to therapy. Our optimum standards aim for nothing
short of excellence, with a continuous effort to innovation and the
total sustainability of all our processes.
