Our idea is to focus on assisting individuals with their use of medications. Specifically, we would like to design a smart pill bottle that alerts a patient’s pharmacy when the bottle is close to empty. We used an Arduino to help us get data from a push button sensor that simulates when a patient has opened their pill bottle. Based on the number of pills remaining in the bottle, the patient will receive a message that either lets them know that they don't have to pick up their medication for a while or when their medication is ready to be picked up. Behind the scenes, a notification is sent to the pharmacy when a patient has almost run out of their medication.
This idea could later be extended to remind the patient to take their medication as prescribed and to connect this to a mobile application that will log when medication is due for a refill and to alert the pharmacy if the pill bottle empties out at an unusual rate, thereby prompting the pharmacist to contact health care providers proactively so they are aware of the possibility of a patient under using or overusing the prescribed medication. This service would be of special utility in the management of conditions such as tuberculosis, HIV, cancer, chronic pain, depression, and several other high-risk and/or chronic medical conditions.
We are proud that we were able to figure out the hardware component to this project and access the data using a Twilio API to send text messages. We learned through various trials and errors, we played around with a lot of hardware this weekend, and learned so much in the process.
Email us at: PillUpDemo@gmail.com :)
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