In today’s world, no one would consume medicine (or most anything else, for that matter) without knowing exactly what was inside and how much he or she was consuming. If you are taking a painkiller, the first question is – what dose do I need? Every person is different, and thus the effective dosage differs from person to person. Standard painkillers are boxed into certain variations of a standard dosing platform (pre-dosed pills, drops, lozenges, etc.), as are most other medicines administered today.
However, personalized health is entering the conversation on a broader scale. Currently, personalization is often focused on diet and general lifestyle, where machine learning is combined with user data to create personalized health and wellness regimens, including diet, exercise and sleep.
Medical cannabis, though, lags behind. Industry players have long since identified the need for a ‘smart’ vaporizer device with Bluetooth connectivity, which allows the user to measure predefined dosage and enter data into a consumer-friendly mobile app. However, the introduction of this type of functionality is not novel. It is just a combination of pre-dosed medicine and interactive applications, both concepts that have been around for many years. This is not, however, where the industry must aim for its breakthrough into mainstream health and wellness. The current challenge, which has yet to be met by any of the industry players, is to create a platform that uses machine learning (the ‘smart’ delivery device) and patient data to create real personalized medicine, accounting for variables such as age, body weight, state of health, history with cannabis and mode of consumption, along with a multitude of other factors, allowing the device/mobile application combo to recommend personalized doses of cannabis products for each patient and control such dosing. Syqe, an Israeli company, has created such a device for cannabis flower. However, as the world moves away from flower and over to more sophisticated products, the need for such an ‘across the board’ platform only increases.
This is where tech meets medicine, an area where cannabis lags behind, but with the increasing number of entrepreneurs focused on the industry it will not be long before we see such a development completely change the face of cannabis consumption in the wellness market.
