Senior Design Expo 2019

iPothecary
Yeil Choi, Christian Puerta, Elijah Shultz and
Cory Ye
Advisor: Josh Browne
For many people, especially those who are
elderly, pills and medication is a natural fact of
life. A large number of those people are highly
dependent on said pills. For them, overdosing or
even underdosing can become a hazard. Many
pharmacies sell sorted containers for their pills
but it’s easy to forget or even lose these boxes.
Sorting the pills themselves can be tedious work.
These days, there are many technological
solutions to this problem involving large
machines and dispensers, but many of them are
expensive, complex, slow or even unsafe.
It’s not hard to see why pills are
increasingly becoming an issue for many people.
Prescription volumes have nearly doubled from
2.4 million to 4.4 million from 1997 to 2016
according to a 2017 Consumer Reports study 1 .
That same study found that about 55% of
Americans take prescription medications and
75% take over the counter drugs regularly. On
average adults have 4 prescriptions, and this
number increases drastically with age. A
prevalent issue in the medical community is
medication non­adherence which has been a welldocumented
and longstanding problem, where a
patient can become careless and forget to take a
prescription. 2
But pills are not easy to deliver. Even
"simple" medications like vitamins and
painkillers are often taken sporadically and add to
the problem. Once a large
number of pills come into the picture, the issue
grows in complexity. Different kinds of
medicines have to be taken in different quantities
and at different time intervals. Organization
becomes extremely difficult very quickly, as
remembering what to take, when to take it, and
when the last medication was taken is
complicated. Such as it is that non-adherence
becomes a problem. With older family members,
medical care becomes a multi-person job, which
can be extremely tedious. Ensuring that the
correct medication is taken at all hours can
become invasive to the lives of family members
as well as being time consuming.
To solve this pervasive problem, we have
spent this past year creating the iPothecary. With
this machine, we intend to simplify the lives of
both patient and caregiver through reliable
automated pill dispensation along with software
tools to help in administering medication needs.
The iPothecary brings convenience by taking
away the need to sort different pills individually
and by allowing both users and caretakers to set
reminders to ingest the medication required
throughout the day. A total of 9 separate
containers live inside of the machine, each
holding a single type of medication. To ensure the
privacy of the user and the security of the pills,
we have added in a RFID chip system that
requires users to scan before they can begin
taking out their pills. In addition, the machine
makes use of the Internet of Things to ensure
accuracy of times and user information. We
promise that this is machine is simple, easy to use
and will make the lives of those who need pills
better.
References
1. Carr, Teresa. “Too Many Meds?
America's Love Affair With Prescription
Medication.” Consumer Reports, 3 Aug.
2017
2. Gadkari, Abhijit S, and Colleen A
McHorney. “Unintentional Non-
Adherence to Chronic Prescription
Medications: How Unintentional Is It
Really?” BMC Health Services
Research, BioMed Central, 14 June
2012
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