THE NEXT BIG THING?

AT&T Service for Your Pill Bottle

Cellphone technology is making its way into more places — and now it’s coming to pill bottles.

AT&T Inc. is offering its service in products called GlowCaps, which are designed to help people remember to take their medication. The caps send data to their manufacturer, Vitality Inc., whenever the user opens the bottle, and this information can be communicated to the patient’s doctor or family members. The caps also remind the user to take the medicine, by flashing a light and playing a ringtone on a device that plugs into the wall; they can call the user’s phone as a reminder and automatically order refills from the pharmacy.

The caps are aimed at getting people to take medications as prescribed — regularly and at the right time. It can be a big problem for people with chronic illnesses, and for the doctors and insurers who want to make sure they don’t get sicker.

Vitality has been offering similar caps for a couple of years now, but earlier versions either didn’t communicate with doctors or relied on the patient to have a Wi-Fi Internet network. The new caps work in any area with cellular coverage.

But the caps are expensive — $10 each on Amazon, plus $15 a month for service that includes the AT&T cellphone network connection. In earlier tests of such caps, pharmacy-benefit companies paid for the devices. AT&T said the pricing is set by Vitality. A Vitality spokeswoman said the cost includes the network service as well as the sending of monthly reports. It also includes a system that contacts patients when they miss their medication and tries to determine what the problem is.

Detailed health information like this is potentially valuable to many people and raises privacy questions. The spokeswoman said data from the bottle caps are sent only to Vitality or the people patients authorize to get the reports, and not to outside companies like drug firms.