Inhaler
AssigneeCanon Kabushiki Kaisha
InventorShinji Watanabe
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
An object of the present invention is to enhance the inhalation efficiency by bearing liquid droplets on an air flow at the early stage of inhalation in an inhaler that is used for the user to inhale a medicine ejected from an ejection head. According to one embodiment of the present invention, from an operation in which the user lets out a breath before the start of inhalation, that is, from the exhalation stage, a positive pressure B produced by the exhalation is detected by a pressure detecting unit, and is compared with a standard pattern stored in a storage unit, by which the exhalation profile of the user is prepared. A time difference t between the exhalation finish time and the start time of next inhalation is estimated, followed by the determination of the ejection start time T1 based on these pieces of information.
Claims9
An inhaler comprising:
- an ejection unit for ejecting a medicine which is inhaled by a user;
- an air flow path for guiding the medicine, which has been ejected from the ejection unit, to a suction port;
- a detecting unit for detecting the exhalation of the user through the suction port in a space in the air flow path or a space communicating therewith;
- an estimating unit for estimating a time difference between exhalation finish and inhalation start of the user;
- and
- a control unit for controlling the drive of the ejection unit, wherein
- the control unit starts the drive of the ejection unit based on the exhalation finish time determined by the output from the detecting unit and the time difference estimated by the estimating unit.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.