A Comprehensive Approach for A Smart Medication Dispenser

This paper presents a comprehensive approach for a Smart Medicine Dispenser (SMD) prototype. The main purpose of the proposed system is to help patients, mainly seniors and elderly people, take their medications on time in an easy manner without the possibility of skipping pills and thus reducing the risk of accidental over/under dose treatment. Failing to take medications promptly can have serious consequences on patients including delay in recovery, occurrence of other illness and even death. The SMD could then help avoiding such serious health issues by alerting patients to take the appropriate dose of medicine at the right time. In addition, it provides a direct communication channel between patients and caregivers by immediately notifying them in case the patients miss their pills. This system will also be of great benefit to doctors, healthcare professionals, insurance and pharmaceutical companies, as it will log medication data and statistics that can be analyzed later. Moreover, the SMD provides patients and caregivers with a user-friendly touch interface available as an application on their smartphones which allow them to remotely manage and control the pill schedules and review medication adherence logs. Keywords: Instrumentation, Smart Medicine, Pill Dispenser, Android Application, PillBox, Mcrocontroller