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Bold Ideas for Accessibility
Bold Ideas for Accessibility
Older adults, and especially stroke patients, often have mobility and dexterity issues, leaving them limited to only one-arm usage. Our goal is to assist patients affected by mobility-related illnesses, or with limited dexterity dispense and manage prescription medication. Prescription management includes, but is not limited to, remembering to take medication, remembering if medication was taken, or retrieval of medication.
Our Objective
Our Objective
Partnering with UC San Diego's Active, Responsive, Multifunctional, and Ordered-materials Research (ARMOR) Lab and SANO Healthcare Consultants, our project aims to produce a custom pill bottle cap that is able to dispense a single pill at a time for different types and shapes of pills, and be operated by one hand with a low-cost multifunctional cap. The senior design project's goal is to create a fully mechanical device, but the ultimate vision is an electronic device
The final design of the pill bottle cap accomplishes the need to dispense one pill at one time, while being able to dispense three different shaped and sized pills. It is designed to be modular, with inserts allowing the user to change the dispenser for a corresponding type of pill. The dispensing portion is a slider, which maximizes ease of use for users with limited dexterity.
Adjustable and customizable dispensers for many different pill sizes and geometries.
Cap that is easy to place onto the bottle with a seal
One-handed operation
Summary of Design Performance
Summary of Design Performance
Trial data from volunteer testing, showing percent dispensed (out of ten attempts per insert) for 3 inserts by each volunteer
Ease of operation ratings from volunteers, showing a rating scale from 1-10 (difficult to easy) per volunteer after testing
Analysis
Analysis
Volunteer testing showed a wide range of results for accuracy and ease-of-use. From Figure 1, the Ibuprofen, or small tablet, had the greatest number of dispenses among pills, while the B12, or large tablet, and the Probiotic capsule had 45 successful dispenses. The ease-of-use ratings in figure 2 and the accuracy scores had a proportional relationship, with higher ease-of-use ratings correlating to more accurate results. Person 4 had a perfect ease-of-use rating at 10, and had perfect dispenses. The team member performing the test had noticed shaking throughout the dispensing process, as well as use of the table as a surface.
Volunteer feedback included concerns about the weight of the design, informing future recommendations on material selection, and also operation, with future consideration of limited shoulder and wrist dexterity.
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