DENVER – As physicians and other healthcare professionals seek increased confidence in recommending and even prescribing plant-based medicines, the industry has responded with a variety of approaches to identify what constitutes an accurate “dose.” Unfortunately, most products fall far short of what’s necessary to create a consistent dosing experience capable of replicating the requirements needed for viable prescriptions.
The reason for this failure, according to Gofire CEO Peter Calfee, is that few companies understand exactly what precise dosing means or how it can be accomplished.
“In order to prescribe medicines, doctors need to satisfy three criteria: quantity, potency and frequency,” said Calfee. “They need the ability to recommend an exact, measured dose of a specific medical formulation at predetermined intervals. At the present time, Gofire is the only company with the technology that accounts for all three of those requirements. A key reason we’ve been able to accomplish this is the Gofire SmartCartridge.”
The Gofire SmartCartridge addresses the needs for true dosing that other vaporization products ignore. Vaporization products currently on the market approach dosing purely through an inhalation lens, either by forcing a timed inhalation or by measuring a dose by volume of air inhaled. Neither of these approaches comes close to providing an accurate and repeatable dosing experience (even when they are combined), according to Calfee.
“In the case of a timed inhale, the concept is that if one person inhales for three seconds and another person inhales for three seconds and yet a third person inhales for three seconds, everyone will get the same dose,” Calfee said. “Of course, we know that everyone inhales at different rates, so just inhaling for the same amount of time does not mean that every person inhales the same amount of medicine.”
Similarly, using volume of air inhaled as a way to measure a dose also falls short. In this approach, the volume of air inhaled is used as the metric to define what constitutes a “dose.” Yet, a huge variance is created by the rate of “pull” during any individual inhale, the temperature used during the inhale and even the amount of oil that remains in the chamber. This approach assumes that the concentration of the vapor in that airflow is consistent throughout the entire inhalation process, which cannot be guaranteed. For example, an inhale that begins with a 10 percent concentration at the start may end with a 30 percent vapor concentration toward the end of the inhalation, Calfee explained. There is virtually no way to ensure a consistent concentration of vapor across the entire process.
The design and technology behind Gofire’s SmartCartridge account for all of the variables that accurate dosing requires. Created for use with the Gofire Inhaler, the proprietary cartridge enables the extrusion of medicine into the convection heating chamber in precise 2.5 mg increments. The difference, according to Calfee, is that Gofire measures the liquid medicine, not the resulting vapor or time of the inhale, as a means to measure a dose.
“The dosage variances that the two inhalation approaches create can be as much as 600 percent,” Calfee said. “In addition to being woefully inadequate to meet medical prescription standards, these approaches to dosing are simply inaccurate and misleading to patients, and the companies using them are not providing a true dose. The overriding concern is that this will scare people away when they don’t experience consistency from dose to dose. In a burgeoning industry with millions of curious but inexperienced consumers, this is a very serious problem.”
A microchip on each SmartCartridge relays the exact chemical formulation of the medicine to the Gofire App, which records the dose inhaled and tracks the outcome. Because the dose is extruded into the Inhaler’s oven for each dose, there is no degradation of the medicine caused over time from being constantly reheated, which guarantees that every dose maintains the same potency. In addition, the complete lack of lead and heavy metals in the Gofire SmartCartridge eliminates the issue of leaching, which has become a critical concern in the industry. What’s more, the design of the Gofire SmartCartridge does not require chemical additives (like propylene glycol) to be added to the oil in order to function, so there are no impurities in the medicine being inhaled.
About Gofire
Gofire is a healthcare technology company developing a proprietary smart inhaler that pairs with a personal dosing app to allow patients to create consistent experiences with plant-based medicines. By removing the fear of taking too much while gaining the support of crowdsourced data, Gofire users find products best suited to their specific needs. Gofire is committed to making health resources safe and accessible through standardizing dose regimens by delivery method and by patient condition. Gofire is helping people realize the medicinal and therapeutic benefits of alternative health products through a new take on wellness innovation. Visit Gofire.co.
