Grooved Wheel Pill Dispenser for Real-Time Dosage Changes
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Solution Overview
Problem
Patients, especially elderly or disabled individuals, face challenges in correctly managing multiple medications, often requiring assistance to organize and take the right pills at the right time, and existing solutions are cumbersome or fail to adapt to real-time dosage changes.
Innovation Solution
A pill dispenser system controlled by an Arduino board and Android application, utilizing a custom wheel with grooves for different pill sizes, dispenses pills at preprogrammed times, allowing real-time dosage adjustments through a Unity Hub software interface.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Loss of time
If pills are prepackaged in bubble wraps or pill pouches and delivered one month at a time, then patients receive a supply of medications, but it becomes highly burdensome for patients to change the pill schedule when medicines need to be changed and they are often unable to change the medication schedule correctly
Solution Approach 1:
The system enables patients to independently program and adjust their own medication schedules through a user-friendly interface without requiring external assistance for pill organization or schedule changes
Solution Approach 2:
The medication dispensing system is designed to be dynamically reconfigurable, allowing patients to easily modify their pill schedules in real-time through software control, making the system adaptable to changing medical needs
2Ease of operation
If family members help patients by taking pills out in pill organizers or traveling to sort out pills, then patients receive organized medications, but this creates a burden on family members and is not sustainable
Solution Approach 1:
The manual mechanical process of sorting pills into organizers by hand is replaced with an automated electronic dispensing system controlled by a microcontroller, which automatically sorts and dispenses pills based on programmed schedules
Solution Approach 2:
The system performs pill organization automatically without requiring family member intervention, enabling the patient to receive pre-organized medications through an autonomous dispensing mechanism
3Reliability
If patients manually track and take multiple medications at multiple times, then they can manage their medications, but it is difficult for patients especially older patients or patients with disability or cognitive difficulty to keep track correctly
Solution Approach 1:
The system incorporates reminder notifications and tracking feedback to alert patients when medications are due and to confirm intake, providing continuous monitoring and correction opportunities
Solution Approach 2:
The system autonomously tracks and manages the medication schedule without requiring patient cognitive effort for tracking, while still providing engagement through reminders and status feedback
4Manufacturing precision
If a wheel with grooves for different pill sizes is used to automate dispensing, then pill dispensing becomes more accurate, but the device complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The wheel is designed with locally differentiated grooves of specific shapes and sizes matched to specific pill types, allowing precise pill capture and dispensing through geometry rather than complex mechanical mechanisms
Solution Approach 2:
A single multi-grooved wheel serves multiple functions by accommodating different pill sizes and shapes through its varied groove configurations, replacing the need for multiple separate dispensing mechanisms
Data Source
AI summary
Millions of people take different medications multiple times a day and need to manually sort medicines into pill organizers, which can cause medication inaccuracies. There is an urgent need for a home-based pill dispenser system to keep track of dosage and its changes in real time, be user friendly, and dispense pills per dose and timing without the need to sort out pills in advance. This invention describes a pill dispenser system with custom designed wheel rotation systems containing grooves on the wheel for specific pill sizes to receive pills one at a time from a receptacle above in the groove of the wheel, and with desired wheel rotation dispense the pill into a receptacle below. The rotation of the wheel is controlled by a 5V stepper motor, an Arduino™, and a custom Android™ application.