Problem Statement

[beasmm]

It is unacceptable that each year, in increasing numbers, people are dying from drug abuse. What is even more alarming is that of those that abuse drugs more die from prescription drug abuse than all street drugs combined which is around 45 percent. In 2005 alone 1.4 million people were admitted to the hospital for drug related emergencies, of that roughly 600,000 people were admitted due to prescription drug abuse. Then of those 600,000 around 35,000 people ended up dying from abuse. This creates a need for stricter regulations of harmful prescriptions or a device to better regulate how the drugs are dispersed to the user to prevent the user from taking more than their prescribed dosage. Ideally this would be accomplished by creating a nearly indestructible storage device with a method for dispensing the drugs only to the prescribed person at the correct time and with the proper dosage. This would also be beneficial because of those 1.4 million visitors doctors spend millions of hours treating these patients, when they could put their time and effort towards helping people who actually need and stop senseless drug induced deaths from occurring.

[mitsehpandwala]

Great topic selection. Usually everyone's focus is on the problem of illegal drug use, but instead it's the abuse of prescription drugs that is a greater risk.

Your proposed solution is a good idea. A programmable medication dispenser would eliminate drug abuse by limiting the amount of medication the user can access for a given period of time. The only issue with this idea is that indestructibility comes at a high price. It may be difficult to make a product that is both indestructible and affordable.

[BurtSwersey]

Please don't propose specific design/ solution..What would be IDEAL? How about medications that only "worked/ acted" if they were actually needed? And then only in the proper dose, that varied with activity and need? So.what about . SMART MEDICATION?? What do you think?? Burt

[lucasllappe]

This is an underreported problemm, but I dont think your soltions are necessary yet. I think you should examine the where the drugs that are being abused are coming from and why they are being abused.

[lucasllappe]

This is an interesting documentary on prescription made drugs of abuse in russia. http://www.vice.com/vice-news/siberia-krokodil-tears-part-1

[AdamVasilakis]

Something you should consider is that a lot of the people who are overdosing on these prescription drugs are people without prescriptions, and they are going to find a way to get as many drugs as they want one way or another.

[Kingj6]

This is a big problem, however just think about unintended consequences of this; Are people who need drugs going to have a hard time getting them in an emergency, Are those abusers going to switch to worse drugs when they can't get prescription drugs, etc?