Within one week in August, Vivera Pharmaceuticals has announced the issuance of two US patents covering its Zicoh smart inhaler technology. The first is US Patent No. 11,083,850 (“Secure smart dosing system with automated delivery, measurement, and management”) and the second is US Patent No. 11,090,449 (“Smart inhaler device with automated dose delivery, measurement, and management”).
According to Vivera, the system includes safety features to prevent abuse of potentially addictive medications, noting that the prescriber or pharmacist can program the Zicoh device with a limited dosage amount and schedule to prevent against overuse, and the device includes biometric authentication to ensure that it is usable only by the patient for whom it was prescribed. The device also transmits data to allow the provider to monitor usage.
Vivera Chief Scientific Advisor Mehdi Hatamian commented, “We have designed Zicoh and the supporting firmware, software, database, network, and security elements around it as a programmable and reconfigurable system for numerous applications. The system is capable of adapting to the requirements for delivering numerous drugs in various modalities. Its use as an inhaler is one such example in Vivera’s pipeline of technologies.”
Vivera Chairman and CEO Paul Edalat said, “Zicoh is going to revolutionize the way drugs are prescribed, taken, and managed, especially those with low compliance or high abuse rates. It will be a key tool in monitoring the use of addictive medications currently fueling the opioid crisis. We are losing too many innocent lives to addiction and it’s time to step it up and work as a team to prevent more people from becoming addicted to prescription medications because of negligence and foul play. We are looking forward to working with the FDA to expedite the process of approval for Zicoh as the device to introduce life-saving medications while providing a solution for the opioid crisis.”
Read the Vivera Pharmaceuticals press release.
