Smart medication dispenser: Design, architecture and implementation

This paper presents the architecture and implementation of an automatic medication dispenser for users who take medications without close professional supervision. By relieving the user from the error-prone tasks of interpreting medication directions and administrating medications accordingly, the device can improve the rigor in compliance and prevent serious medication errors. By taking advantage of scheduling flexibility provided by medication directions, the device makes the user’s medication schedule easy to adhere and tolerant to tardiness whenever possible. The medication scheduler and dispenser controller do this work collaboratively in an action-oriented manner. An advantage of this design is that new functions can be added and existing ones removed or revised with little or no need to modify the dispenser control structure.