MedCare

OVERVIEW

Assistive Technology (AT) has become essential in everyday life due to an increasing number of people with chronic disease, the aging population, as well as the lack of new care-taking paradigms.

As one possible solution to reduce forgetting to taking medications on time, we designed a connected portable pill dispenser for patients and care recipients, called MedCare.

MedCare is an IoT portable pill dispenser, that enables care-recipients remember to take their pills at the right time. MedCare also comes with a MedCare iOS application, which enables caretakers check in on their care-recipients who own MedCare pill dispensers.

With both the portable dispenser and the mobile application, the goal of the project was to also help patients and care-takers create a routine that enables patients take their medication on time, even when in inconvenient situations. The application was also designed to foster a relationship between the patient/care-recipient, and their informal care-taker.

The dispenser was created using a Raspberry Pi, to keep track of when the pill dispenser is open or closed, at the time the patient needs to take his/her pill. At the time they’re meant to take it, the pill dispenser makes a sound, or vibrates, based on the user’s settings. This part was written in Python.

If the patient misses their pill at the given time, after a few reminders, the dispenser sends an alert to the our Firebase database, which in turn alerts the care-taker’s iOS application (developed in Swift, also connected to the same Firebase database). All of this happens in real-time.