Medicine instruction support system by sensor embedded intelligent cup

Abstract

Since medicine treatment is one of the most major and effective cure methods, many patients take medicine every day. On the other hand, patients sometimes have serious accidents because some of them do not follow correct medicine dosing method (i.e. taking medicine without enough quantity of water). Though it may result serious accidents, in general, their doctors cannot notice the above-mentioned facts. In this paper, we propose a sensor-embedded intelligent cup that provides instructions for correct dosing and a medicine instruction support system using it. The proposed cup is the dual structure of a tumbler equipped with water level and acceleration sensors. The cup can detect if enough quantity of water is in it before a user takes medicine by using the water level sensor. We developed a calibration method for the water level sensor and implement it so that the quantity of water can be measured on any temperature. The cup can also detect if a user has taken medicine with the enough quantity of water from the cup by SVM (Support Vector Machine) using data of the acceleration sensor. Furthermore, the cup can also detect the quantity of water left in the cup using the acceleration sensor. The system will also provide the dosing history (i.e. when the dosing has conducted) to a user's caregivers (care giver and family in distant) through web interface. We conducted experiments and confirmed the positive effect of the proposed intelligent medicine cup.