A New Electronic Medication Compliance System

描述(由申请人提供)：第一阶段SBIR的目标是展示由ZigBee(一种低成本、极低功率的无线网络)和低成本机顶盒实现的药物合规系统的可行性。随着美国人口老龄化，服药依从性的重要性与日俱增。研究人员发现，缺乏服药依从性是人们被安置在养老院的首要原因。现有的用药依从性系统要求从他们的药房处方瓶中取出药片。拟议中的系统不会。小型可重复使用的药丸传感器模块适用于标准处方瓶的底部。拟议的系统可以很容易地从1瓶扩展到数百瓶，可以放置在房子的任何地方，也可以从单个用户扩展到同一住宅中的多个用户。用户通过电视机和红外遥控器与机顶盒互动，这类似于标准的电视遥控器。在拟议的项目中，KBT将通过制作硬件和软件原型并进行台架测试来证明拟议系统的可行性。可行性目标是证明所提出的无线药丸传感器模块能够自动、可靠地与机顶盒进行通信。成功的标准是95%以上的ZigBee链路测试在禁用错误恢复机制的情况下成功。有了这些性能结果，具有健壮错误恢复协议的生产系统将获得近乎完美的性能。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The goal of this phase I SBIR is to show the feasibility of a medication compliance system enabled by ZigBee (a low-cost, very low-power, wireless network) and low-cost set-top boxes. As the United States population grows older, the importance of medication compliance increases. Researchers have identified the lack of medication compliance as a top reason for people being placed in nursing homes. Existing medication compliance systems require pills to be removed from their pharmacy prescription bottles. The proposed system does not. Small reusable pill sensor modules fit in the bottom of standard prescription bottles. The proposed system easily scales from 1 bottle to hundreds of bottles, which may be located anywhere in the house, and from a single user to many users in the same dwelling. Users interact with set top boxes via their televisions and infrared remote controllers, which is similar to standard television remotes. In the proposed project, KBT will demonstrate feasibility of the proposed system by prototyping the hardware and software and conducting bench tests. The feasibility goal is to prove the proposed wireless pill sensor modules can automatically and reliably communicate with the set top box. The success criterion is over 95% of the ZigBee link tests succeeding with the error recovery mechanisms disabled. With these performance results, the production system with a robust error recovery protocol will achieve near perfect performance.