Smart Pill Management System for Elderly Patients

Abstract

This paper presents a Non adherence of patients toward their medicinal prescription is a known problem in the medical field. This problem is commonly seen among the elderly because with old age comes poor memory and a higher risk of getting diseases. With that problem in mind, the research developed a smart pill box that tries to improve medication adherence. The pill box automatically dispenses medicine on a set time based on the input schedule in the mobile application and has an LED and buzzer to indicate that medication is due. An IR sensor detects whether the medication has been taken out of the pill box and logs the time it was taken. An additional wearable device that has an LED and buzzer was also developed as an additional notification system. In the functionality tests, the proponents were able to determine if the basic functionalities of the system were met. These tests showed that the system is capable of dispensing medicine at a configured schedule along with triggering its alarms however, as time progresses the real time clock of the microcontroller started to incur delays therefore becoming out of sync with actual time. A user acceptance test was also conducted in order to determine the usability of the system. Hence, the medicine dispenser solves the issues by making the patient self dependent and reducing contrary situations.