Big Sky Labs has raised $1 million in seed funding to develop a device to dispense medications and provide other home health services such as wellness checks and health monitoring.
The device, called PillPez, dispenses medications at specified times during the day from pre-loaded medication strips available from most pharmacies. If an individual does not take the drugs, PillPez provides an escalating set of reminders, including to caregivers or family.
“When it’s time to take the medicine, the machine lights up and kind of flashes and says it’s time for your noon dose,” said Dave Hunt, co-founder and CEO of the Everett, Wash.-based company. After that, “some audible reminders kick in, and if they still don’t take it, they get an automated phone call,” followed by reminders to designated caregivers.
Hunt currently is also an owner of Assured Independence, which delivers infrastructure for telehealth and other services to medicaid and home care organizations in Western states. Two other founders of Big Sky Labs, Dan Stone and Eric Paul, are also owners of Assured Independence.
Their experience at Assured Independence convinced the trio of the need for improved medication management options, said Hunt. Many of the people accessing services through Assured Independence “are managing chronic disease, and they’re also fighting Alzheimer’s, or they’re developmentally disabled, or any number of things.”
Prepackaged strip packs, such as those available through Amazon-owned PillPack and other pharmacies, help with medication adherence. But many people still have problems taking their pills in the right doses at the right time.
Medication non-adherence costs Medicare $4.5 billion annually for older adults with diabetes and $5.6 billion for those with heart failure, and accounts for about 118,000 emergency department visits annually for high blood pressure in the U.S. That’s according to a study by the U.S. government-funded Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation.
Other companies with options for medical adherence include Seattle startup Optimize Health, which has multiple systems for remote patient monitoring, including a bluetooth-connected pill bottle cap that keeps track on an app when a pill bottle is open or closed. Vancouver, B.C.-based CuePath monitors medication adherence through an electronic sticker on the back of blister pill packs, and other companies such as Karie Health and Hero make devices that automate pill dispensing with associated reminder systems.
Hunt says that as the company develops, PillPez will offer a broader range of services such as video visits and wellness checks, which currently often occur through a disparate set of providers. The current feature set moving toward user beta testing includes medication management, in-home emergency response, and biometric monitoring of health devices. Big Sky Labs calls the internet- or cellular-enabled device a “home health hub.”
The PillPez device is being built by ClaroVia Holdings, a technology development company. ClaroVia’s CEO, Dan Preston, is also a Big Sky Labs founder, as are two other ClaroVia employees, John Gibson and Sam Hemingway.
The funding will allow the company to move PillPez from conceptual design to a product ready for market testing. The company aims to sell the device as part of a subscription model to health service providers, including those that serve people on Medicaid and Medicare. The device also will be for sale to individual consumers, at a target price of under $750, said Hunt. The company did not disclose the sources for seed funding, but they are independent investors, said Hunt.
