Peris

What it does

A secure and affordable pill bottle that only dispenses the prescribed dose at the prescribed time. With over 60 people dying everyday in the U.S. from a prescription opioid overdose, our product significantly reduces the risk of opioid misuse and overdose.

Your inspiration

A few years ago, I became responsible for taking care of my uncle. He was prescribed opioid painkillers after a car accident and he took too many of these pills. He struggled with opioid addiction, so much that he lost his job, his home, and everything else he had. I saw first-hand how these little pills can destroy lives. Ever since, I have dedicated my life to understanding this problem. Opioids have opium, an addictive narcotic, as their main ingredient. One in four people who receive opioids struggle with addiction, and ultimately, over 60 people die every day in the U.S. alone from a prescription opioid overdose. It’s a silent epidemic.

How it works

Examining the core of the problem, the patient is put at risk when they start overusing their medication. The patient takes more pills than prescribed. Overuse of opioids leads to deadly outcomes as the patient either starts on their path to addiction or suffers from a lethal overdose. Peris prevents medication overuse. Our solution is a tamper-resistant pill bottle equipped with a timed dispensing mechanism which ensures single-pill delivery. Our design keeps the stockpile of the medication locked and secured while only dispensing the prescribed dosage at the prescribed time. Every four hours, one pill is made available to the patient, and as soon as that dose is taken, the bottle locks for another four hours. Our solution is a preventive mechanism to stop everyday patients from overusing their medication. We empower patients by providing them with a medium that allows them to regulate their medication intake.

Design process

Our progress to date includes the development of four prototypes and we are scheduled to have our fifth prototype which would be ready for small-scale manufacturing and extensive testing ready by August 2017. We have been repeatedly testing each prototype with a pool of around 25-45 users (patients, pharmacists, physicians, etc.) to generate feedback and we actively iterated our designs accordingly. We led an intensive customer development initiative to truly understand the opioid epidemic from all perspectives; hence, we have conducted over 600 cold calls and meetings with all stakeholders involved within our venture — patients, physicians, behavioral scientists, pharmacies, pharmacy benefit managers, pharmaceuticals, FDA, CDC, NIH. Initially from the conception, we began with the concept of a smart pill bottle with expensive functionalities. After speaking with our stakeholders, we found that cost is of their direst concerns. Furthermore, with over 700 million bottles of opioids being dispensed every year, an affordable product is much easier to scale and reach the masses. Hence, we pivoted our engineering strategy to an intuitively simple, standalone design which is affordable and scalable.

How it is different

Our indirect competitors are smart pill bottles (Hero Health, Pillsy, AdhereTech, etc). These are simply data gathering devices and they do not prevent medication overuse. Our other indirect competition is SaferLock that produces locking caps which mount onto any bottle to keep others from breaking in. Again this solution does not prevent overuse and misuse by the patient. Our only direct competitor is E-Pill. They produce highly tamper-resistant pill dispensers that come at a hefty price of over $600/unit and weigh 4 Pounds & 2 Oz (1.8 Kg). Their products are bulky and highly costly. Our product embodies an intuitively simple design which can be easily used by anyone. Our standalone design is portable, weighing about 3oz (85g), and most importantly, it is affordable at only $6 per bottle to produce. Our solution is tailored to the intricacies of the opioid epidemic. At an affordable price and standalone design, we're truly scalable, unlike our competitors.

Future plans

First step is to finalize our patents filings and injection molding for a first production round. The next step is to use the molding and equipment to produce a small batch of around 300 units for testing. That inventory will be used to supply pilot programs in NYC, NYU Langone, and Stanford Medical Center. We initially sell our product to addiction treatment centers as our starting market. In the long run, we target healthcare insurance insurance companies because they have the most monetary incentive to cover the cost of our product as they currently pay out over $72 billion every year for costs associated with opioid overuse alone.

Awards

Prototyping Fund Phase I and II of the NYU Tandon School of Engineering 1st Place products in the New York City NYS Business Plan Competition