Fraunhofer Center for Assistive Information and Communication Solutions – AICOSDescription:
Low medication adherence is huge problem amongst older adults and can cause serious problems to their health. Taking the wrong medications at wrong times can lead to the hospitalization of older adults. This problem is being addressed by a large community of researchers which led to a wide spectrum of solutions. These range from simple smartphone applications that alert users to take the medication on time, to custom smart medication boxes which will alert the users via audio signals when it is time to take the medication. Both solutions represent a great burden for the users because when using smartphone applications they have to dismiss the alerts even when they remember to take the medication on time. When the medication it’s not at hand the alarms just ends up to be dismissed and the medication is not taken.
The goal of this project is to create a solution to minimize the problem described before by using a set of sensors that are applied to the medication boxes. These sensors are able to identify when the user has taken the medication and/or warn the user when the wrong medication is taken. The sensors would have accelerometers or gyroscopes to classify how the box is being manipulated by the users. The sensors would be attached to the medication boxes and the movement detected on them will be sent wirelessly to a smartphone which will automatically dismiss the medication reminder.
Author: Manuel Meruje
Type: MSc thesis
Partner: Universidade da Beira Interior
Year: 2016
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