Patients taking prescription medication—and the nurses that care for them—have one less thing to worry about, thanks to a new device approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

The Electronic Medication Management Assistant (EMMA), manufactured by INRange Systems Inc. of Altoona, Pennsylvania, is a “Web-enabled pharmacy” that allows pharmacists, nurses and other health care practitioners the ability to remotely schedule medications, alter doses and manage delivery for patients taking up to 10 medications.

According to Chris Bossi, president of INRange Systems, medications are delivered to patients packaged in blister cards, which the patient then inserts into EMMA just as a compact disc is inserted into a CD player.

“The unit grabs it and that’s the last thing the patient has to do,” he added. “EMMA reads the barcode and knows what the medication is.”

An audible alarm and a visual alarm alert the patient when it’s time to take their medication. Extra precautions are put in place for patients who may not notice either of these alarms.

“The system can call their home phone to tell them when it’s time, in case they are hard of hearing,” Bossi continued. “If they don’t take it within a prescribed period of time, it can call a relative and let them know.”

In order to receive FDA approval, INRange had to do usability testing with people ages 24 to 86 and found that once the elderly population overcame their reluctance to use the technology, they found it easy to use.

Bossi explained that EMMA has proven useful to nurses, as well, who are now able to spend more time caring for their patients and less time managing medications.

“The reception by nurses has been very good because now they don’t have to worry about sorting loose pills or about whether the patient didn’t take their medication,” he said.

The device’s creator, Mary Anne Papp, D.O., FACC, an associate professor of medicine at the Medical College of Wisconsin and the director of the Heart Failure Clinic at Froedtert Hospital, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, was responding to a need for a system that eased the frustration of nurses caring for congestive heart patients whose medication dosages changed frequently.

“My goal was to create an electronic nurse who would sort the patient’s medications, reorganize them when they change and deliver them to the patient,” Papp said in a statement on the INRange Web site. “EMMA is that electronic nurse. She is stationed in the home 24 hours a day, seven days a week. She works nights, weekends, holidays and takes no vacations. Now, home nurses can concentrate on what they do best: caring for the patients while EMMA manages the medications.”

Bossi concluded that currently EMMA is best used to serve the chronically ill and those with traumatic brain injury. He added that the company is also talking to the military for potential use with patients suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.