Design of a Smart Medical Box for Automatic Pill Dispensing and Health Monitoring †
Zara Nasir, Amina Asif, Muhammad Nawaz, Ali Muhammad
Abstract
Medication non-adherence or mismanagement in medicines schedules such as missing doses, taking the wrong amounts, or having medicines at incorrect times is a serious problem, especially in elderly patients or patients with serious illnesses, and may lead to deadly consequences. This paper proposed a smart medical box that dispenses not only medicines at prescribed schedules but also has a basic health monitoring system for the patient’s temperature, oxygen level, and heart rate detection, thus relieving the patient from visiting a doctor. This device is Raspberry Pi-controlled, having an added security feature of biometric recognition so that the medicine is dispensed to the correct patient. Moreover, the user is notified once their medicine has been dispensed via SMS. The main aim of this project was to keep the device cost-effective, user-friendly, simple, and beneficial for the elderly population.