Back to results
US 2014/0277705 A1Published application
Medication Compliance Monitor - Method and Apparatus
AssigneeIPComm
InventorsStanislaw Czaja, Muhammad Afsar
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A method and apparatus for remote monitoring of the daily dispensing of medication is disclosed. In one embodiment a dispensing unit equipped with weight sensing mechanism such as scale or balance communicates with a monitoring application residing in a wireless terminal. The monitoring application provides supervision over a medication dispensing process.
Claims20
A medicine dispensing compliance system, the dispensing system comprising:
- a medicine dispensing unit;
- and
- a medicine dispensing application, in wireless communication with the medicine dispensing unit,
- wherein the medicine dispensing unit includes a medication container, weighting unit, a dispensing control mechanism, and a wireless communication interface;
- and wherein the medicine dispensing application includes a user interface adapted to interface with a selected user of the medicine dispensing compliance system, and wherein the medicine dispensing application further includes a plurality of user parameters associated with and corresponding to the selected user;
- and wherein the medicine dispensing application performs all of the following medicine dispensing functions:
- authentication of the selected user and selected medical supervisors;
- scheduling of dispensing time intervals according to one ore more scheduling parameters;
- alerting the selected user of an incoming dispensing period by means of audio or textual messages;
- calibration of medicine dispensed by the dispensing system thereby generating a calibrated weight of the dispensed medicine, comparing the calibrated weight of the dispensed medicine with an individual dispense weight parameter contained in a medication parameters buffer;
- alerting the selected user when the dispensed medicine weight is not equal to a specified weight value;
- alarming the selected medical supervisors if a dispensing schedule is missed, or if the weight of the dispensed medicine differs from what is prescribed, or if the weight of the medicine before dispensing is different than the weight of a previously dispensed similar medicine;
- and canceling the alarming function if a pre-defined set of conditions are met.
10 more elements
A method of dispensing medicine to a selected user, comprising:
- providing a plurality of user parameters associated with and corresponding to the selected user, wherein the plurality of user parameters include the following:
- identity information related to the selected user;
- weight information related to medicine dispensed to the selected user;
- dispensing scheduling information including time and weight of medicine to be dispensed at a pre-defined period of time;
- a list of valid pre-approved alert cancellation responses;
- a plurality of local alerts;
- and a plurality of actions to be taken under selected conditions;
- authenticating the selected user based upon at least one of the user parameters;
- providing exact weight information of the medicine to be dispensed to the selected user;
- providing a dispensing schedule comprising a dispensing time and amount of medicine to be dispensed;
- obtaining a calibrated weight of the medicine to be dispensed to the selected user;
- dispensing the medicine to the selected user if the calibrated weight of the medicine to be dispensed is sufficiently close to the exact weight information of the medicine to be dispensed, wherein the sufficiency is determined by a selected parameter,
- and not dispensing the medicine to the selected user if the calibrated weight of the medicine to be dispensed is not sufficiently close to the exact weight information of the medicine to be dispensed, and alerting a selected medical supervisor.
10 more elements
A medicine dispensing compliance system, the dispensing system comprising:
- a medicine dispensing unit;
- and
- a medicine dispensing application, in wireless communication with the medicine dispensing unit,
- wherein the medicine dispensing unit includes a medication container, weighting unit, a dispensing control mechanism, and a wireless communication interface;
- and wherein the medicine dispensing application includes a user interface adapted to interface with a selected user of the medicine dispensing compliance system, and wherein the medicine dispensing application further includes a plurality of user parameters associated with and corresponding to the selected user;
- and wherein the plurality of user parameters include at least one of the following parameters:
- identity information related to the selected user;
- weight information related to medicine dispensed to the selected user by the dispensing system;
- dispensing scheduling information including time and weight of medicine to be dispensed at a pre-defined period of time;
- a list of valid pre-approved valid alert cancellation responses;
- a plurality of local alerts issued by the dispensing application;
- and a plurality of actions to be taken by the dispensing application under selected conditions.
9 more elements
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.