Andrew Thompson is co-founder, president and CEO of Proteus Digital Health, a California company that is wielding medical technology, wearable technology, wireless technology and cloud technology to solve the problem of poor medication adherence. 

According to a 2006 article published in the Journal of American Medical Association (JAMA), about 50% of patients with chronic diseases do not take their medications as prescribed. That leads to $100-$300 billions spent in the U.S. in treating them that could have been avoided. Lack of medication adherence is an intractable problem, one that Thompson aims to solve.

Proteus has developed an ingestible sensor that when taken with a drug records the timing of medication ingestion as well as the body's physiological response to the drug. The sensor is part of an integrated system including an adhesive patch, worn on the torso with which the ingested sensor communicates. The patch records the time the patient took the oral medication and collects data on steps, rest and heart rate, and communicates to a mobile app via Bluetooth.

Last month the FDA-approved device also won added clearance from the agency such that it can be used to measure medication adherence.