Monitoring medicine intake in the networked home: The iCabiNET solution

Abstract

We introduce an intelligent medicine cabinet as a new element of a residential network, acting as a secure place to store sensitive health information, and therefrom access a range of interactive health care applications. This paper describes the functionalities related to monitoring the intake of prescription and over-the-counter drugs, harnessing recent advances in smart medicine packaging and home networking. Compared to previous systems, ours helps reducing the risk of medicine misuse, featuring higher precision and enhanced interactive facilities that reach in and out of home. This contributes to solving a problem that impinges heavily on the well-being of people and the economics of public health systems.