Flexible Medication Tray for Accurate Verification
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Solution Overview
Problem
Healthcare professionals and consumers face challenges in accurately identifying and verifying the contents and quantities of medications due to lack of time and resources for confirmation, and consumers lack quick and effective means to determine the contents of their medication containers.
Innovation Solution
A bendable tray with flexible walls and a floor that can deform to release medicines, allowing for discrimination between medications and quantities, and enabling easy pouring back into a container, utilizing flexible materials like rubber or elastomers for the tray and its components.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Measurement precision
If healthcare professionals manually verify medication contents and quantities, then accuracy of dispensation is improved, but time consumption and resource requirements increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces an intermediary system consisting of a camera, image processing unit, and comparison database that automatically verifies medication contents. This intermediary performs the verification task that would otherwise require manual healthcare professional intervention, thereby maintaining high accuracy while significantly reducing time consumption and resource requirements.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent replaces the mechanical manual verification process with an automated optical and computational system. Instead of healthcare professionals physically handling and counting medications, the system uses image capture, digital processing, and automated comparison to verify medication contents, eliminating the need for manual mechanical verification while maintaining or improving accuracy.
2Measurement precision
If consumers manually handle and count pills to verify medication contents, then accuracy is improved, but risk of contamination and error increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces an intermediary verification system that captures images of medication contents and performs automated analysis. This intermediary process allows consumers to verify medication accuracy without physically handling the pills, thereby eliminating contamination risk while maintaining verification accuracy through digital image processing and comparison.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent replaces the mechanical process of manually handling and counting pills with an automated optical scanning and image recognition system. This substitution eliminates direct physical contact between consumers and medications, removing the contamination pathway while maintaining or improving verification accuracy through computational analysis.
3Stability of the object's composition
If a rigid tray structure is used to hold medications, then structural stability is improved, but ease of pouring medications back into container decreases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies the dynamics principle by designing a tray with flexible or movable walls that can transition between stable configurations for holding medications and deformable configurations for pouring. The tray maintains structural stability during the verification process through its rigid frame, but allows controlled deformation when pouring is required, enabling easy medication transfer back into the container.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent utilizes flexible walls or thin film structures within the tray design. These flexible components maintain the tray's overall structural stability while allowing controlled deformation when pouring medications is needed. The flexible portions can be easily manipulated to tilt or open, enabling smooth medication flow back into the container without compromising the tray's structural integrity during use.
4Productivity
If medications are poured directly from container for verification, then verification speed is improved, but risk of loss or misplacement increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces an intermediary tray system with imaging capabilities that receives medications from the container for verification. This intermediary structure provides a controlled environment where medications can be imaged and verified without being scattered or lost. The tray's confined structure and optional closure mechanisms ensure medications remain contained throughout the verification process, eliminating misplacement risk while maintaining verification speed through efficient imaging.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent replaces the mechanical process of spreading and manually counting medications with an automated imaging and analysis system. Medications are poured into the tray in one action, and the system automatically captures images and verifies contents, eliminating the need for manual handling that could cause loss or misplacement. This substitution maintains verification speed while significantly improving reliability by containing all medications within the tray structure throughout the process.
Applied Scientific Principles
This section explains which scientific principles are used to turn an abstract innovation direction into a practical engineering solution.
Function Achieved in This Case
The tray facilitates accurate identification and verification of medication contents and quantities, allowing healthcare professionals to confirm dispensed medications without manual counting and enabling consumers to ensure accuracy without handling pills, thereby improving dispensation and user safety.
Implementation Method 1
A tray may have a flexible floor and one or more flexible walls capable of deforming when the floor is bent. Upon deforming, the flexible wall may allow medicines within the walls of the tray to exit the tray.
Data Source
AI summary
A flexible tray has at least one flexible wall extending about at least one medicine held in place by a flexible material, the at least one medicine being selected from the group consisting of pills, capsules, tablets, caplets, and gel caps and mechanical means to connect the at least one flexible wall of the tray to the flexible material so that the tray holds the at least one medicine below the top of the at least one flexible wall.