Medication Container with Timing Circuit and Cluster Base
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Solution Overview
Problem
Medication noncompliance is a significant issue due to patients forgetting to take their medications or taking incorrect dosages, leading to accidental overdoses and fatalities, as existing systems are often inconvenient, complex, and fail to provide accessible and organized pharmaceutical information.
Innovation Solution
A medicine container system with an electrical circuit and timing device that provides continuous visual and audible signals to remind patients when to take medication, combined with a cluster arrangement for multiple medications and a compartment for storing medical information, allowing easy access and organization.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If medication containers are organized in a cluster with timing devices and information storage, then medication compliance and safety are improved, but device complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent combines multiple functions into a single integrated medicine container system: the container holds medication, the cap contains a timing device with visual indicators, and the base provides information storage and cluster organization. This merging of functions improves reliability by ensuring all components work together while managing complexity through unified design rather than separate devices.
Solution Approach 2:
The medicine container system serves multiple purposes: it stores medication, provides timing reminders through visual indicators, stores pharmaceutical information in the base, and can be organized in clusters for patients taking multiple medications. This multi-functionality improves compliance by addressing multiple patient needs within a single system framework.
2Loss of information
If a timing device with clock face or digital readout is incorporated into the medication container cap, then timing information is provided, but the information is difficult to read and understand
Solution Approach 1:
The timing device uses color-changing visual indicators (such as colored lights or color-coded segments) to display timing information. Instead of requiring patients to read small clock faces or digital displays, the system uses intuitive color signals that are easily distinguishable, directly addressing the readability problem while maintaining accurate timing information delivery.
3Loss of information
If medication information sheets are stored separately from the medication container, then information is accessible, but patients lose or misplace the information
Solution Approach 1:
The information storage base is designed to be nested with or attached to the medication container. The base can hold information sheets in a structured manner within the container assembly, ensuring that information remains physically associated with the medication it describes. This nesting approach prevents loss while maintaining easy accessibility when the container is opened.
4Reliability
If multiple medication containers are kept in separate locations, then organization is simplified, but patients cannot easily access all medications and may take incorrect dosages
Solution Approach 1:
The system provides a cluster arrangement where multiple medication containers are grouped together in a single location on the timing base. This merging of multiple containers into one organized cluster ensures all medications are easily accessible while maintaining proper organization through the shared timing and information infrastructure, directly addressing the contradiction between accessibility and dosage accuracy.
Data Source
AI summary
A medication adherence and container system for informing a patient when it is time to and not to take medication; for storing medicine information sheets with the medicine containers; and holding the medicine containers in arranged clusters, having containers and caps which interact between each other as switches with the electrical circuits provided. The electrical circuits have a timing device which can be set for a predetermined elapsed time and provides a continuous signal, such as a colored light, during the running of said predetermined time to indicate “not to take medication” and then provides a different signal, such as a different colored light, when the predetermined time has lapsed to indicate “take medication” and continues that signal until being reset upon breaking the electrical circuit between cap and container and restarting the timing device on closing the circuit between cap and container for measuring another predetermined elapsed time.