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A new high-tech pill organizer designed by two students could help save lives and billions of dollars to the health-care system.

According to Statistics Canada, 50 percent of Canadians don't follow their prescriptions. As a result, one out of 10 patients ends up in the emergency room. This problem can have lethal consequences on the health of a patient and contributes to the blockage of ERs across the country. This problem represents $9 billion nationwide, which two students have tried to remedy with a new invention.

"Improving the management of medication intake will surely contribute to reduce the number of people in ERs," says inventor Neda Nasseri who recently graduated from the Université de Montréal's Department of Pharmacy.

"Technology that enables us to collect data on how people really take their medication will help pharmacists conduct stricter observance," adds co-inventor Soheyl Afaghi who recently graduated from the Université de Montréal's affiliated engineering school École Polytechnique.

Nasseri and Afaghi set off to remedy this problem as part of the Technological Entrepeneurship course at the École Polytechnique. "Neda (Nasseri) had told me about the lack of control pharmacists have on the intake of medication by their patients. We got the idea of developing a tool useful to both practitioners and patients," says Afaghi.

Argus the pill organizer, named after the giant with a hundred eyes from Greek mythology, also sees all. The Argus prototype has both a sound and visual alarm to notify the individual that it is time to take their medication. Information on the medication appears on the LCD screen. For instance: "take with food" or "can cause sleepiness." The patient can choose to have the machine read the messages out loud.

The devices biggest innovation comes from its USB port, which allows pharmacists to know when medication was taken and at what dosage. "The intent isn't to infringe on the privacy of people," says Afaghi. "Obviously the pharmacist needs the consent of the patient. But what we hope to accomplish is to decrease the consequences of non-optimal usage of medication and therefore reduce traffic in emergency rooms," says Nasseri.

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