DENVER, Colorado — Medication can be a lifesaving tool for people around the world, but sometimes we forget to take it or it needs to be injected, which can be difficult to do on your own.
Now the medical technology company SmartTab is trying to simplify the process with smart tablets.
The Colorado-based company is working on three capsules with different functions - TargetTab, InjectTab, and MultiTab.
The TargetTab is a capsule that's designed to be tracked as it goes through your digestive tract.
It's supposed to release a drug in a specific part of the body.
The SmartTab team hopes this would make medications more effective because they get released into the body at the right time and in the right place.
Dr. Doug Miller, the company's Chief Medical Officer said, "We’ve got pre-clinical data on it and so far the performance of it has performed very well."
The InjectTab is the second kind of smart tablet, which would be used to deliver medications that are typically injected, like insulin.
If successful, this tablet would remove the need for self-injections.
"We anticipate that our InjectTab capsule will be less expensive than the auto-injectors," said Dr. Miller.
Finally, there's the MultiTab, which is intended for use with medications that are delivered in multiple doses over a period of time, things like antibiotics and steroids.
Dr. Miller said, "The advantage to this is that the drug is delivered at the correct time, so you don’t have to worry about the patient forgetting to take their dose."
SmartTab is now working on pre-clinical trials for the InjectTab and the MultiTab.
If all goes well with those trials, the next stage would be trying human trials with all three kinds of smart tablets.
After that, SmartTab would need to seek approval from the Food and Drug Administration.
