Drug compliance is a critical issue. If drugs are not administrated exactly as physician's guideline, the effectiveness of drugs is reduced and drug tolerance may occur. As simple as it seems, taking drugs on time can be a challenge.
A wrist watch does a good job on timing, so why not let the watch take care of this problem. The idea is simple. We'll let the watch do what it does best: timing. When it comes to the right moment, it will trigger a small ultrasound device located at the back of a watch. Liquid phase drugs can then penetrate the skin with the aid of ultrasound. Using ultrasound to administrate drugs noninvasively through human skin is not a new idea. Human's back is used as one of the targets.
There are some of the issues with this design. The first occurs to me is to secure a good contact. One solution is to automatically tighten the wrist band mechanically when drugs are released. The other solution is to use balloons embedded on the inner surface of the wrist band.
The second issue coming along is battery life. Addition to a watch's traditional functions, it needs to power the ultrasound device and tighten a wrist band. I'll leave this one for other engineers.
Third issue is medicine contamination. It can occur inside the reservoir of the watch or at the watch-skin interface. And this will be a key challenge for getting approvals from the FDA.
There might be other potential issues. However, I think it is an idea that worths pursuing. As a biomedical engineer, I feel this great responsibility to keep people healthy and make life easy.
I'll appreciate any commons you have. Let's work together and make some good changes.