Elderly assistive device for taking medications

Abstract

Millennials and Generation Z, often overlook how easy it is to absorb technological knowledge due to being born and raised into a massive spike of technological advancements. The same cannot be applied to earlier generations. This suggests that in order to traverse this market of an aging demographic, a different method must be used to integrate with them accordingly. Such methods would have to be as least intrusive as possible, and moreover would require to be far less engaging which ultimately would provide the user with the same adequate benefits that a traditional method would have achieved. The objective for this project is to design a device which can select and provide the correct medicine and dose to the user automatically. It is important to focus on the automation of this process, to reduce the amount of interaction the user must endure with the device and enhance the ease at which the user gets to fulfil such a mundane task that is extremely detrimental to their wellbeing. Henceforth, I will focus on how to implement the automation of oral, non-liquid medication intake and alleviate the respective stress induced from dated traditional means. Conceptualising this device from start to finish, made extensive use of the various skills acquired throughout discovering the love for designing. This custom automatic pill dispenser was modelled and rendered using the 3D CAD software Autodesk Inventor. By using an Anycubic Vyper Fused Deposition Modelling (FDM) 3D printer, Polylactic Acid (PLA) thermoplastic polyester was used to print the shell and integrating it with COTS devices and electronics.