A Smart Prescription Container for Monitoring Chronic Disease Patients

With the revolutionary growth of the Internet of Things (IoT) and the increasing number of chronic disease patients, a trend toward building a reliable, smart prescription system to aid healthcare has emerged. Many patients suffer from poor medication adherence and often forget to take their prescribed medication on time, thus endangering their lives and general health. This paper addresses this issue by proposing a system that monitors patients' medicine intake in terms of time, dosage, pill refill, and expiration date by sending notifications to a mobile application, the SPC App. This application is connected to a particular medicine container, Smart-Prescription Container (SPC), which exploits the Internet of Things (IoT) technology. The proposed system comprises several hardware devices to produce the electronic circuit that collects data from a sensor. The data is then sent to an attached actuator and microcontroller to remind patients of medication time through a notifying light and to ensure that patients have consumed the amount of prescribed medicine. In the case of missed doses, the notifying light will not turn off until the patient swallows the prescribed medication. Moreover, notifications regarding missed doses, refills, and expiration dates are sent to the patient. From a security point of view, the proposed system satisfies the authenticity, confidentiality, availability, non-repudiation, integrity, and reliability security requirements.