Cancer Specialist's Pill Dispenser Cleared for Marketing

Ten years after its inception, a programmable pill dispenser invented by South Whitehall cancer specialist Dr. Gazi Abdulhay is now available for sale.

"Dispense-A-Pill," a device designed to dispense and manage as many as 16 medicines, including inhalers and eye drops, at the proper time each day, received "class-1" registration for marketing from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in November.

Abdulhay said his company, HealthOneMed, already sold more than 100 units and is preparing for a major launch in January following a presentation at an East Coast venture capital conference in Baltimore.

The dispenser is ideal, the doctor said, for adults living at home who might have difficulty remembering to take a number of different medicines at the appropriate times of day.  Pills are poured into one opening and the machine does the rest: separates, sends alerts and dispenses correct amounts.  The device holds a 90-day supply, is child-proof and sports a large display screen that can even be programmed with reminders to "walk the dog" or "water the plants."

About as big as a coffee maker, the device costs $995 with options to lease.

A truly homegrown invention, Dispense-A-Pill was Abdulhay's solution to a patient's difficulty keeping her dozen or so medicines straight.  Senior engineering students at Lehigh University helped design and produce prototypes that won awards and garnered more than $50,000 in grants from the Ben Franklin Technical Partners.  Families in the Lehigh Valley, Maryland and North Carolina have been testing the devices in their homes.

For  Abdulhay, the dispenser is a shining example of the future of telemedicine -- the monitoring and treating of patients by doctors and nurses who can be miles away but in contact through home-based  technology.

Such devices, he said, can save this country billions of dollars lost to unnecessary doctor visits and hospital stays that result from poor adherence to taking medicines properly.

Abdulhay is already working on the second generation of his invention, a dispenser that's even easier to use and affords two-way communication between patient and provider.

For more information or to place an order, consult his Web site, www.healthonemed.com.