If you’ve ever battled chronic pain or have had some kind of operation, like a wisdom tooth extraction, you’ve probably received a prescription for oxycodone. Over the past couple decades, opioids like this have become many doctors’ go-to painkillers, and the results have turned out to be nothing short of catastrophic. Because the body can develop a tolerance to these drugs, subsequently higher doses are then required to relieve the pain. This, combined with the fact that people can become dependant on them, ropes many into addiction, constantly seeking their next high. As a result, 44 people die daily from an opioid overdose—twice as much as from heroin.
But Larry Twersky has something that can help prevent this: the TimerCap. As CEO of TimerCap LLC, he’s developed this handy timed lid to keep track of when and how often medicine gets dispensed. “The Timer Cap™ is a patented Smart Cap with a built-in LCD timer that works like a stopwatch, letting you know exactly how long it has been since you last opened your medication,” he explained. “Every time you open the cap, the timer resets back to zero. When you close the cap, the timer automatically begins counting up the hours and minutes since you last took your medications so you don’t have to.”
Most opioids have clear instructions, like to take them every four hours and not to operate heavy machinery or motorized vehicles. But Twersky compares the situation of giving someone opioids with a generic cap to giving a person a car without a speedometer. Although they’ll see road signs, they really won’t know how fast or slow they’re going until there’s a real problem and they get pulled over. Additionally, the effects of opioids only make it harder for patients to track their last usage.
