System for increasing compliance with medication regime

Abstract

A drug-dispensing arrangement for dissociating side effects, particularly gastrointestinal side effects, such as nausea and/or vomiting, from oral ingestion of a medication eliminates the development of learned taste-aversion. If a large, random and unpredictable order of flavors, and preferably well-known and pleasant flavors, are experienced by a patient in conjunction with ingesting a specific medication, the ability to form an explicit association between any one flavor and the untoward side effect will not be possible. As an example, a supply of medication is provided to the patient in a blister pack containing a random distribution of uniformly colored pills of multiple, familiar flavors so that a patient is not able to learn to any association between the flavor/odor/color of a pill and any subsequent nausea or stomach upset. In this example, the pills can be distinctively flavored by application of a flavored coating, such as a pharmaceutical glaze, or an enteric or reverse enteric coating.

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