Finasteride Transdermal Patch?

It occurred to me that there is no reason that the finasteride clock has to be based on a 24-hour clock. I work for JPL and we use an elongated day in order to plan rover activities on Mars. This means that the days are longer than 24 hours.

I have developed a titre-method that maintains an average daily dose of 1mg of finasteride using quartered proscar pills. Take 1.25 mg every 30 hours as such:

Sunday: 6am 1.25mg
Monday: 12pm 1.25mg
Tuesday: 6pm 1.25mg
Thursday: 12am 1.25mg
Friday: 6am 1.25mg
Saturday: 12pm 1.25mg
Sunday: 6pm 1.25mg
Tuesday: 12am 1.25mg
Wednesday: 6am 1.25mg
Thursday: 12pm 1.25mg
Friday: 6pm 1.25mg
Sunday 12am 1.25mg

But why go through all the trouble? Why hasn’t anyone developed a transdermal patch or implanted finasteride device to main a constant titre? Is this hard to do?

I commend you on your scientific reasoning and approach, but I must point out one flaw: human beings are not computers and can be somewhat lazy in nature. We have a hard time keeping to a set schedule no matter how simple it may look on paper. Can you remember to brush your teeth exactly at a certain time? Maybe it would be a different story on Mars, but it’s hard enough to get someone to take one pill just once a day. Compliance is the issue at hand. One more thing which may be a bit more important — the half life of finasteride is about 4 hours. To maintain a constant level, the presence of the drug will deteriorate on a minute by minute basis so you might need to actually take 0.125 mg per hour or 0.00209 mg per minute. Try that for a compliance model.

A transdermal finasteride patch is a good idea, but there needs to be money, clinical trials, special drug formulations, and pharmacokinetics to make that work. Who will be willing to put up that research and investment when the cost of Propecia itself (in a simple pill) is cost prohibitive for many men?