Medicine Gets Inked

"Printable" drugs have been around for quite some time. There were "paper" printed forms available in the 60's and 70's for some "special" formulations.

Qick acting through absorption through the tongue with no need to swallow.

I would not advocate multiple drugs on one deliver item though. If you needed say paracetamol and codeine that have different half lives in the body, then when you need the next dose of codeine, you could not take the medication due to residual paracetamol.

Imagine also the completixty of dosage variations of say three medications with three dosage levels. (four if you consider "zero") then you would have 4 x 4 x 4 = 64 different pills/wafers/strips of that to stock, identify, control and administer instead of the current situation of 3+3+3=9.

I suppose they could print the medication as "rainbows" (for bipolar)or little rabbits (childrens pain relief) or scary faces (dangerous side effects) or whatever. Maybe print it into the barcode.

Having the drug on the outside of a pill sounds like an accident waiting to happen...increasing the risk of accident and/or spoilage of the product, seems to me.

Pick it up with wet fingers? ... active ingredient gone.. Spilled that pill bottle?... pick em up.. but you won't know whether some of them may have chipped away the active ingredient... Child gets hold of pills?.. parent may grab the pill away, but is the damage already done? Suicide attempt? ... too late to get those pills out of the stomach, the business part is already delivered.

I don't see how such a system could possibly be "safer", please explain.

As for the 'multidrug tablet', I myself don't take any pills (except the scattered vitamin) but I know people with multiple meds, and guess what. They take these meds at different times of day, to manage the side effects. Some things have to be with meals, others not, still others are best before bed, etc etc. I don't see how you could optimize a multi-med printout.