Development of Smart Automatic Drug Dispenser for Elderly and Disabled People

It is essential to give elderly people their medication on time. Elderly people are often left alone in the household with no assistance to consume pills on time. They are in need to depend on someone to do the same. The purpose of an automatic medicine dispenser is to help people who take prescription drugs without careful medical monitoring. Considering another case, in which consuming false intake of pills on wrong time or the situation of not consuming the pills also would increases the death tolls. To overcome such incidents the proposed solution is developed as “The Automatic Drug Dispenser”. The system consists of Raspberry Pi with camera for face detection and recognition, dispenser module with three compartments which carries the medicines for morning, afternoon and night, alarm unit for alerting the patient to take medicine, motor unit to rotate the dispenser. To identify the patient, the system has a camera for facial recognition and a Raspberry Pi interfaced with it. If the person is identified, the medicine dispensing time is also matched then the motor will rotate and dispense the correct medicine. The Respective compartment containing the respective pill of the verified user is dispensed using motors. Through sensors the confirmation of the pill being taken is verified. The system is not able to dispense the pill when the user/caretaker isn't verified. Along with this a load cell is attached with the dispenser to indicate the availability of the medicine, which is to alert the user when the pill supply in the container is optimal and to remind them to restock the dispenser with the necessary number of pills. The main goal is to maintain the gadget's affordability and simplicity. The programme in use is stable and dependable. This technology can help the elderly population because it can save them money on costly in-home medical care