Smart pill dispenser with pill administration monitoring
Award for novel point-of-care device
Introduction
Having to consume medication regularly is becoming a common occurrence with more and more drugs being available to treat a problem or manage its effects. Forgetting to take medication can lead to extremely serious consequences. We have several instances where patients who are older and suffer from memory loss keep forgetting to take their medications and in some cases may even mistakenly take repeated doses of the medication. Patients with compromised motor ability sometimes miss their medicine doses due to dropping their medicines.
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A parallel more niche problem in the umbrella theme of medication adherence occurs in the pharmaceutical industry where drug trial tests get falsified since the patients involved in the study (especially extended studies) do not take their medication as instructed and may be hesitant to consume the medication in some cases. There is often no way to test if the patient has been sticking to the medication schedule.
This is a device which focuses on the detection and delivery of oral medication. It is a smart pill dispenser which dispenses the pill only into the user's mouth thereby ensuring the oral administration of the pill at the appropriate time.
User Survey
In order to narrow down who our target users would be and better understand their needs and behaviours with respect to their medication habits, google forms were circulated.
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Following this, interviews were conducted with both doctors and patients in order to further understand pain points.
During the survey, data like the age of the users, behavioural patterns, modes of storing medications during travel etc.
Most of the users who took the survey were in their late 20s. They said that they needed reminders in order to make sure that they took their pills as per schedule.
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During our initial survey, the attempt was to try and understand the patterns of people who take the medication in a consistent manner
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This section of the people who feel like it is okay to stop/skip as and when required without sticking to the prescription was a problem stated during our interview with medical doctors as well
The reason stated by most of these people was forgetfulness
How often do you miss taking the medication pill per doctor's prescription (in a week)?
User interviews were then conducted from those users who were determined to have some type of condition which would need repeated medication
" I would love to have something which lets me know that my dad has taken his medication"
-Anonymous
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" It could be reassuring to have a device which lets me know if my kid has had the medicine I had sent him with to school"
- Anonymous parent
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Clinical investigation via Doctor interviews also gave us additional insight into other potential problems they have seen during medical practice.
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" Some patients do not have good motor control, especially as they age, and the pills end up falling and an under-dose happens"
- Dr Pradeep Raj
Our target user may not be the target buyer.
Some more insight was gained as to how people normally carry their pills when they travel
​How do you carry your medications while traveling?
Another data point in order to better understand user behavior was to ask about how water, which is often needed along with pills for consumption is handled by the user
Do you carry your own water bottle?
How much would you be willing to pay for a device which ensures pill consumption?
To ascertain how much a potential customer would be willing to pay if such a product would come into the market some data was collected, since this would serve as a design input/something to keep in mind in later stages of product development
Problem statement
To design a system to ensure adherence and administration of oral medication in a prescribed manner
Stakeholders
List of requirements
Demands :
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Must ensure oral administration
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Must detect pill dispensing
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Must dispense accurate dose as per the prescription
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Alarms/ alerting mechanism
Wishes:
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Cheap cost
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Ensure that the pill has been swallowed
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Low manual intervention
Brainstorming
Inspiration
Market Study
A few gaps in the existing solutions I found during a market survey of existing devices:
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Lack of integrated solutions for multiple problems
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Involvement of manual effort to ensure adherence
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Lack of confirmation of taking medication into the oral cavity/ingesting it
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Difficult for clinicians to track records of the medication taken/missed by the patients
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Non-adherence to medication becomes challenging because of the gap in the conversation between clinicians and patients (intentionally/unintentionally).
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High Costs along with Low Awareness about Medical Adherence Devices
Concept Sketches
Concept Evaluation
Selected concept
The final concept was a simple dispenser with interchangeable plates and a simple humidity sensor-based human detection system, a microphone-based pill dispense detection mechanism where the pill falls onto the microphone diaphragm allowing for detection of dispensed pills.
Existing devices
The following is a comparison chart with different existing devices which are representative of the currently existing dispenser/pill organizers available
Prototype
Business model Canvas
Award for Novel Point of care device at MEDIC 2022
BETIC, IIT Bombay