An automatic medication self-management and monitoring system for independently living patients

This paper describes the development, prototyping, and evaluation of RMAIS (RFID-based Medication Adherence Intelligence System). Previous work in this field has resulted in devices that are either costly or too complicated for general (especially elderly) patients to operate. RMAIS provides a practical and economical means for ordinary patients to easily manage their own medications, taking the right dosage of medicine at the prescribed time in a fully automatic way. The system design has the following features: (1) fully automatic operation for easy medication by using the built-in scale for dosage measurement and a motorized rotation plate to deliver the right medicine container in front of a patient, (2) various medication reminder messages for patients, and noncompliance alerts for caregivers (such as doctors, relatives or social workers who take care of the patients), and (3) incremental and economical adoption by pharmacies, patients, and insurance companies.