Medication Dispenser

Background

Within our group, we either have a chronic medical condition or have had a parent
or grandparent with a complicated medical history. From our personal
experiences and encounters, we've recognized a true need for a simple yet
effective system to ease the unpleasant daily routine of taking prescription medications.
When you have a medical condition that requires multiple medications taken at
different times of day or at regular intervals, keeping track of what
medications to take, when to take them, or how much to take becomes a
confusing process. Failure to do so can sometimes compromise the effectiveness for
certain medications and significatly alter daily routines.

To simplify the process, there are various products on the market. Different pill boxes serve as containers to parse out medications to be taken each day or at certain times, but fail to offer reminders
for time-sensitive medications. While there are various "reminder" products
such as calendars and/or alarms, it is easy to dismiss the alerts without actually taking the required pills. We want to
introduce a system that can not only serve as a container and reminder, but
also as a dynamic dispenser. This system would aggregate all of the
medications a person needs to take and will reinforce reminders effectively to guarantee the efficacy for
a prescription.

Implementation

Since a medical condition already complicates a patient's lifestyle, we envision a
simple system. With pills dispensed in bottles, bottles can be plugged
into chutes in the dispensing container. The system could be scheduled to dispense medications from each
respective chute at a set time, and the tray would have a force sensor to
detect the weight change when a pill is released from the conatiner.  The system will measure the amount of time the pills sit on the tray. Some sort of light display will change colors or flash to indicate the amount of time
that has passed. For example, the longer the pills sit on the tray, the more
violently the light could flash or the colors could change from green to yellow to
red to indicate urgency. The display could alternatively display a specific color to correspond to each medication and would display that color when the corresponding pill sits in the tray.  The intensity of the color could grow as the pills sits in the tray without being taken.  We may also investigate using sounds or other indicators to identify urgency in taking a specific pill.  Once the pill is removed from the tray (and therefore, it is likely the medication has been taken), the indicating effects will turn off.

Also, when the bottles are running low, the system
can serve as a reminder that certain medications require
re-fills.  Perhaps a light surrounding the empty medication bottle could illuminate when the bottle is empty.  A more advanced feature would be if the pill is removed an hour
later than the scheduled time, the system would shift subsequently scheduled intervals accordingly and dynamically updated subsequent dispensing times for the other medications.

We will investigate principles for good physical designs for the system.  The goal will be to have a system that is pleasing to the eye (as the idea will be to keep the system in a well-traveled place in a person's life), while also noticeable enough to grab a person's attention when action is needed.  We also need to investigate methods for inputting the actual schedule of medications into the system (i.e. whether we want to design an easy-to-use GUI for a connected laptop, etc.), as a product like this might be ideally suited for erderly people or others whose mobility is restricted.

Materials Needed

Container (to be designed) to hold medicine bottles and enclose necessary electronics

Arduino board

Force sensor

Mechanics to control opening and closing of chutes (perhaps using servo motors or something similar)

LEDs for light displays

(Optional) Speakers for sound emission 

Related Work/Inspiration:

Forthcoming....
Marble Answering Machine
(Personal Experience: Self, Parent, Grandparents)