Smart pill box and RFID medicine jar remind silver-haired people to take medicine on time
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With the advancement of medical technology research and development, many diseases that were easily fatal in the past can be cured with drugs to control the disease or cure, and people’s life span is also much longer. In addition to therapeutic drugs, regular supplementation of nutrients, such as vitamins, can also be used to prevent certain diseases. However, in order for the medicine to exert its effect effectively, the first prerequisite is that the user must take the medicine on time and correctly in accordance with the medication instructions. Many medication errors occur because of negligence caused by busy people or misinterpretation of medication usage. Our smart pill box is designed to help people solve these problems.
Use object and process
In medical institutions such as hospitals or nursing homes, professionals, such as nurses and nursing staff, have unified management and care for taking medications, and give medications to the medication users on time. There is no need for the medication users to bother to deal with it. There is a chance of error. Also lower. Therefore, our smart pill box sets the goal to be a home-based product for home care, assists in the medication management of home-takers, reminds and is responsible for the control and scheduling of all medications.
Let us first assume that all medications used by home-takers, including prescription or over-the-counter medications, such as vitamins, must be handed over to the smart pill box for control. The reason for this is that in addition to saving the trouble of taking medicine at home, the most important thing is to know and check the possible interaction between the medicines from different prescriptions, so as to avoid danger to the person taking the medicine. Using software programs, we convert all medication instructions and information into a machine-readable file format and store it in a flash drive. This type of file is called Medication Schedule Specification (MSS) for short.
Figure 1. Pharmacists check drug conflicts and generate MSS
When a person taking medicine at home gets a new prescription or wants to buy an over-the-counter medicine, he only needs to bring a flash drive with useful medicine information (drug schedule specifications) to the pharmacy and give it to the pharmacist. The pharmacist can get it. Know all the medication information, and then use the Prescription authoring tool to check whether there is any conflict between the medications taken by the home-administered medication. After confirmation, a new medication schedule specification is generated and stored in the flash drive, and then the newly added medication jar, together with the flash drive after the modified medication schedule specification, is brought back to the home-administered medication, as shown in Figure 1. . After returning home to take medicine at home, they only need to insert the flash drive into the smart pill box, then put the medicine jars one by one according to the instructions of the smart pill box, and then follow the instructions of the smart pill box to take the medicine.
The medicine jars obtained from the pharmacist for home-administered medicines are affixed with an RFID tag on the bottom as a basis for distinguishing different medicines. In the smart medicine box, we have installed an RFID reader. When entering a medicine container, the smart medicine box uses RFID to link the medicine container to the corresponding medicine scheduling specification, and then uses the internal medicine scheduling program to automatically generate the medicine according to the medication instructions and information provided in the medicine scheduling specification. Medication schedule. When the medication time is up, the smart pill box can correctly inform the home-administered medication, which medications to take, the dosage of each, and display the position of the corresponding medicine jar on the pill box.
Design and architecture of smart pill box
From Figure 2 we can see that the smart pill box has several main essential components:
Figure 2. Design drawing of smart pill box
1. Container with RFID tag
2. A memory card (MSS flash disk) with medication scheduling rules
3. Socket with indicator light
4. Reminder
5. Screen (LED display and Text display)
6. Auxiliary verification of the correct box for a single medication (Verification box)
7. Dispensing drawer
8. Confirm button (Push to dispense, PTD)
9. USB socket to store MSS
RFID technology and steps to use
To use the smart pill box at first, insert the flash drive containing the MSS of the medication scheduling specification into the smart pill box, and then insert the medicine jars into the circular slot one at a time. We set up a switch sensor in each circular slot used to place the medicine jar, as shown in Figure 3. Then use a two-dimensional sensor array (binary sensor array, BSA) to record whether each circular slot is placed in the medicine jar, as shown in Figure 4. When the smart medicine box senses that a medicine jar is put in through the switch sensor, it will instruct the RFID Reader to read the tag on the medicine jar and record its id. After a period of time, if no new medicine jars have been put in, it means that the home user has finished placing all the medicine jars he took; then the smart medicine box will lock the medicine jar on the medicine box and start to build a circle The corresponding position relationship chart of the slot and the medicine jar id. This relation table will be changed when the medicine jar is added or removed in the future.
Figure 3. Switch sensor
Figure 4. Two-dimensional switch sensing array
In the process of placing the medicine jar, the reason why it is necessary to put one medicine jar at a time is to prevent the RFID Reader from reading multiple RFID tags at the same time, and cannot correctly correspond to the position relationship of which circular slot the medicine jar is put into.
At this point, the home-administered medicine has been set up for the smart pill box. After that, the smart pill box will notify the home-medicine users of the medication and dosage each time they need to take each time according to the medication use schedule established by its internal medication scheduling program. When the time to take the medicine is up, the smart pill box will notify the home taking medicine through a reminder device that sounds or flashes. At this time, after receiving the notification, the home-administered medicine person only needs to press the confirm button in front of the smart pill box. The smart pill box uses the color change of the ring indicator to show which drugs are to be taken this time, for example: this time The indicator light of the medicine that needs to be taken will be red; unlock the medicine jar. People taking medicine at home take out the medicine jar one at a time according to the ring indicator light, and the indicator light of the medicine jar taken out will turn green, and the LED screen will display the required dose of the medicine. After taking the medicine at home, take out the correct dose according to the instructions, put it in the box that assists in verifying the correctness of the single-dose medicine, confirm whether the dose is correct, and finally put the medicine jar back. At this time, the smart medicine box closes its ring indicator light and locks the medicine jar on the medicine box again. By using the above mechanism, it is possible to prevent those taking medicine at home from getting the wrong medicine or taking the wrong dose of medicine.
When the medication time is up, if the home-taker fails to take the medication according to the instructions, the smart pill box will re-schedule after a period of reminder, and then notify the home-taker again according to the new drug taking schedule. When the home-administering person fails to take the medicine as instructed, the situation is serious and may even cause danger, the smart pill box will notify the doctor or family member via the Internet or phone to ensure that the home-administered person is urged to take the medicine correctly.
Figure 5. Appearance of the actual product
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