Inhaler
AssigneeCanon Kabushiki Kaisha
InventorShinji Watanabe
Life of this patent
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Abstract
An object of the present invention is to enhance the inhalation efficiency by causing liquid droplets to be borne on an air flow in an early stage of inhalation in an inhaler. According to one embodiment, from an operation in which the user lets out a breath before the start of inhalation (that is, from exhalation), 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, and in this way the exhalation profile of the user is prepared. A time difference t between the exhalation finish time and the start time of the 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 said ejection unit, to a suction port;
- a detecting unit for detecting exhalation and inhalation of the user through the suction port in a space in said air flow path or a space communicating therewith;
- memorizing unit for memorizing a time difference between exhalation finish and inhalation start of the user;
- and
- a control unit for controlling driving of said ejection unit,
- wherein said control unit starts driving of said ejection unit based on an exhalation finish time determined by an output from said detecting unit and the time difference memorized by said memorizing unit, and wherein, after starting driving of said ejection unit, a corrected time difference is determined based on exhalation and inhalation of the user detected by said detecting unit, and said memorizing unit memorizes the corrected time difference.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.