Group Members: Victor, Rinni, Claire

 

Sources

Kuehn, Bridget M. 2014. “Payers Probe Ways to Help Curb Risky Prescribing.”JAMA, The Journal of the American Medical Association 311, no. 11: 1097-8.

Bridget Kuehn, a staff science writer for the Journal of the American Medical Association, presents the problem that doctors face of prescribing medication too frequently to patients.  Kuehn highlights how the lack of oversight of physician prescribing practices has fueled prescription drug abuse and thousands of overdose deaths. She also presents the exorbitant cost of prescription drug abuse on the nation’s healthcare system as a whole.  Kuehn explains different ideas that have been proposed to track the prescribing practices of doctors and mitigate the risks of prescription drug abuse. We will use this source to present the need of our healthcare innovation, which has the potential to curb prescription drug abuse and mitigate the risks for both doctors and patients.

 

Hersberger, Kurt E, Boeni, Fabienne, and Arnet, Isabelle. 2013. “Dose-dispensing Service as an Intervention to Improve Adherence to Polymedication.” Expert Review of Clinical Pharmacology 6, no. 4: 413-21.

Hersberger, Boeni and Arnet are professors from the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of Basel in Switzerland.  These three authors present the issue of nonadherence, or the process of patients not taking their medications as prescribed. They present how different dose-dispensing methods have been developed to improve patient adherence in an effort to improve health and reduce the costs associated with nonadherence.  We will use this source to present how similar dispensing systems have been developed in order to to ensure patient adherence to prescribed medication. Our healthcare innovation will aim to build upon these advancements to ensure more security and prevent intentional or unintentional overdoses of medications. We will attempt to develop an automated pill-dispensing system that is secure and produces maximum adherence by eliminating the chance of human error or tampering as much as possible.

 

Koba, Mark. 2013. “Deadly epidemic: Prescription drug overdoses.” USA Today, July 28, 2013. https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2013/07/28/deadly-epidemic-prescription-drug-overdoses/2584117/.

Mark Koba is a senior editor at CNBC whose publications include articles on topics of health care.  In the article, Koba presents the massive uptick in deaths associated with the current prescription drug epidemic.  Koba explains how this epidemic has been fueled by the massive demand for prescription drugs in the United States, as millions of drug prescriptions are written annually.  We will use this source to support the crucial need for our healthcare innovation to help combat this prescription drug crisis. Our innovation will allow medications to be administered and taken in a manageable and safe way that will prevent addiction and overdoses.  Our innovation could have the potential to save countless lives.