I propose a device consisting of a cheap webcam or scanner and one of those 7 day pill cases with a clear bottom.

The system would take a picture of the pills in your pill case and use optical recognition to determine what pills moved/disappeared.

If you forgot to take your pills at the set time it would text you a reminder, likewise if you removed the pills from the wrong day or time it would warn you immediately that you were about to take the wrong dose.

Thousands of people die each year from accidental overdoses. This would cut down on that. you could even have a mode to e-mail caretakers or relatives if a patient forget to take a pill.
-- metarinka, May 30 2013

A cheap version that guesses when pills have been taken based on the weight of the pillbox at a given time. Such a scale could serve as an entry level product to the more comprehensive idea you propose.

Just attach it to the fire alarm, if they have no cell.

Scare the begeezus out of everyone.
-- popbottle, May 30 2013


// they also think they have an everlasting power source. //

They should have, or at least a long-lasting one. Maybe a radioactive one.

This is a pretty good idea and has the additional virtue that it focusses on the Cinderella subject of concordance. I feel incredibly passionate about concordance and the fact that it's ignored, because that basically makes all medical research useless.
-- nineteenthly, May 30 2013


My thought would be to use a scanner/all-in-one printer or a webcam as that is a cheap off the shelf product that a lot of people have. If it was purpose built, I would make a small platform that had a webcam below and a fine scale (scales in that sensitivity start getting somewhat expensive though)

The end Idea is to have a pill case that knows when you have taken your pills and if you took the right one. I might actually build this project as it is just off the shelf character recognition and pills are incredibly reproducable and easily separated based on shape or color.
-- metarinka, May 30 2013


blah blah blah infection blah South Korea blah blah pharmacy puts all the meds in some kind of machine that encapsulates the meds for each day into a long strip, minor modification one tablet per enclosure with printed "take this in the morning of [date]...blah blah
-- not_morrison_rm, Jun 02 2013



random, halfbakery