Goodbye, Plastic pill-organizers–INRange Systems offers automated medication manager

EMMA®, an electronic medication management assistant manufactured in Altoona by INRange Systems, will be available for use by patients at home in January 2009.

According to Mark Drummey, the company’s executive VP of business development, 25 of the FDA-cleared devices, which provide the accuracy of a professional nurse in dispensing pills, have already been recruited for the care of wounded soldiers at two leading hospitals for U.S. military personnel–the Brooke and Walter Reed Army medical centers.

EMMA’s® daily-medication maintenance, which operates on a network that links a patient’s doctor, pharmacist, and medication history, will eliminate errors in self-administered doses that cause some 150,000 deaths each year, Drummey says.

While working as a physician at the Veterans Administration Medical Center, Cardiologist Mary Ann Papp recognized among older groups of former soldiers a need for consistent monitoring of the amounts and timing of doses for high-potency drugs, such as blood thinners, particularly in the home. She pursued the idea with Chris Bossi, an engineer friend from Altoona, and the two created EMMA® and formed INRange Systems, of which Bossi is now president.

The result is a device that will be available next year to all patients who need daily assistance with medications. EMMA® holds as many as 300 individual doses, which are supplied in bar-coded, foil backed “bubble” cards that were designed in Philadelphia. Each card holds 30 doses and as many as 10 cards can be loaded in EMMA® like CDs. Reading bar-code information, EMMA® punches each pill from its individual dose enclosure at the prescribed time. EMMA® also sounds an alert when medicines are ready, provides reminders when they haven’t been taken, and even reinforces earlier alerts with a telephone call if the patient allows too much time to pass.

Anticipating strong demand for EMMA®, the company expects to add programmers, operational and technical staff, and sales and marketing professionals in 2009. The company received financial assistance from the Ben Franklin Partnership of North Central Pennsylvania and the Life Science Greenhouse of Harrisburg. It owes its existence to talented individuals from at least three Pennsylvania cities along a line that stretches from the northwest to the southeast corners of the state.

“It’s a true Pennsylvania success story,” Drummey says.

Source: INRange Systems, Mark Drummey
Writer: Joseph Plummer

To receive Keystone Edge free every week, click here.