“It’s essentially a Viagra-like drug for women in that diminished desire or libido is the most common feminine sexual problem, like erectile dysfunction is in men,” reports John Thorp Jr., a principal investigator in the studies and the McAllister distinguished professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine.

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A startup called Vitality Inc. designed a pill bottle system that automatically reminds you when it’s time to take your pills, so you won’t forget.

With Vitality’s system, when a pill-bottle cap is opened, it uses a close-range wireless signal to tell a base station in the home. That station, which looks like a night light, essentially has a cell phone inside that can send messages through AT&T’s network.

If the bottle isn’t opened at the appointed time, the cap and night light start blinking to remind the owner to take the medication. If that doesn’t serve as enough of a hint, they start playing jingles as well. If the bottle stays unopened, the night light will send a message to Vitality’s system, which can then place an automated phone call or send a text message with a reminder.

That points to another possibility opened by the wireless bottle cap: making the pill-taking routine more than just a matter between the patient and the bottle. Vitality’s system can be set to alert a relative if someone isn’t taking medicine.

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But both Man and Payne also acknowledged that there are scientific obstacles to antibiotic research that cannot be solved by incentives alone. A deadly new class of antibiotic-resistant bacteria — so-called gram-negative bacteria — have a protective layer that has largely stymied drug developers. Drug-resistant bacteria “have multiple defense mechanisms to new drugs,” says Man. “There are difficult technical challenges.”

To Cars, the scientific challenges are more worrying than the financial obstacles. “Even if we got the incentives right, there’s a knowledge gap that needs to be filled,” he says. “The pharmaceutical companies have already picked the low-hanging fruit and developed drugs for the ‘easy’ bacteria. We are facing a rapidly spreading pandemic. And we are running out of ammunition. We need to do something now.”

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