If you sometimes forget to take your medication, you’re not alone.

Studies show that only about half of all medications for chronic conditions are taken as directed. Twelve percent of people never even fill their prescriptions. Another 12% fill them but never take the pills. And 22% take the drug less often than they’re supposed to.

Well, a company called Proteus Digital Health, based in Redwood City, California, has come up with a potential solution to this problem—and the concept sounds like something from The Jetsons. The company has developed an ingestible electronic sensor that is implanted into pills and ensures that every swallowed pill gets digitally recorded. In other words, the technology keeps track of how often you’re taking your pills.

Some experts think that this technology is ingenious, while others worry that it could lead us down a slippery slope that invades our privacy—and encourages us to swallow something electronic (creepy!).

Intrigued, I dug deeper into the pros and cons…

TATTLETALE PILLS

This technology is new—the FDA approved it this year, after the sensor proved to be safe and effective in clinical trials. Right now, it’s approved for use only in placebo pills, but soon…who knows? Clinical trials are underway in the areas of diabetes and central nervous system and transplant care.

The size of a grain of sand, the sensor contains magnesium and copper. Once swallowed, stomach juices moisten the sensor and activate it, triggering it to send out an imperceptible voltage. This is recorded on a patch on the skin—“Drug taken at 9:30 am.” The sensor then travels through your digestive system and is excreted (again, imperceptibly).

The information stored on the patch can then be sent to an app on a Bluetooth-enabled mobile device (a category that includes, for example, certain smartphones, mp3 players, tablets and laptops). With the patient’s permission, a doctor or caregiver can access the information to ensure that the medication is being taken as directed.

Extensive testing so far—which has been done mostly in animals and has looked for things such as toxicity related to ingesting metals—has detected no significant health side effects. In human testing, the main adverse event reported was skin irritation from the patch.

PRIVACY CONCERNS

“It’s a little out there, isn’t it?” said Mark Rothstein, JD, founding director of the Institute for Bioethics, Health Policy and Law at the University of Louisville School of Medicine in Kentucky, when I called to ask his opinion of the technology. (Rothstein has no financial ties to the device.)

On the one hand, he noted that there are potential upsides to this technology. With compliance being such a huge problem, the sensor might be particularly helpful for people with complicated medication schedules, people who are a bit forgetful and for caretakers of the seriously ill or cognitively impaired.

But there are potential downsides, too. Even if the sensor is safe and effective and patients give informed consent to take it, he said, “It strikes me as getting close to big brother in the medicine cabinet.” For example, might all pills someday contain the sensor—and might we all be required to wear the recording patch and let doctors and insurance companies see the data? What about employers—could they see the data, too, to make sure that employees are trying to stay healthy…and could the government have access to the data if it’s helping pay for your medical care?

If so, the potential negative consequences are wide. Could your insurance company stop covering a drug—or stop covering you—if you don’t take medication exactly as directed? Could an employer fire you (or decline to hire you) for the same reason?

All in all, it’s promising technology that has the potential to help many, but, personally, I have concerns that if the wrong people are allowed to get their hands on this information, then this “hero” sensor could easily become a “villain.”

I want to know what you think about it. Would you want your drugs to track and create a record of your compliance—and to have this information available to your doctor, caregiver and/or insurance company? Comment below!