PillSense: Designing a Medication Adherence Monitoring System Using Pill Bottle-Mounted Wireless Sensors

Abstract

The recent innovations in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs), the physical sensors, and the Internet of Things (IoT) have enabled more Cyber-Physical systems (CPS) applications within the connected health sector. Medication intake is one of these applications that focuses on finding an efficient, accurate alarming, and easy to use solution that tracks medication compliance. Such a system should be wireless, mobile, and highfidelity, to track the medication taking patterns. This paper presents a non-invasive medication compliance monitoring system that is based on collaborative sensing technique. The system utilizes a medicine bottle that encompasses a combination of a switch sensor, a MEMS accelerometer, a load cell, and a wireless interface. We investigate the feasibility of collaborative sensing with the aim of reducing overall energy consumption as well as, maintaining mobility in order to promote user's acceptability and usability. We conducted experiments examining medication intake activities. Our results indicate the monitoring of the developed multi-sensor system for pill intake. From the energy consumption point of view, our results show that our system can continuously work on a single coin-cell battery for more than 22 days, while maintaining regular medication intake monitoring.