Pill Buddy – Part 2: The Web App

Assistive Devices, Projects, Web Applications

Summary

After Part 1 of the Pill Buddy project, in which I built an Arduino Smart Pillbox to remind patients and caregivers of pill schedules, I realized that an important component was missing. Long-distance caregivers who are responsible for their patients needed more control. I designed a companion web application to give caregivers more control over activities such as setting pill schedules and communicating with other caregivers.

The Problem: I realized the Smart Pillbox, Part 1 of this project, needed to better serve the needs of multiple caregivers and the patient:

  1. Multiple caregivers need a single platform to communicate with each other.
  2. The Smart Pillbox needs a web interface to provide an editable prescription guide, and to set up Twitter, SMS, and/or email channels easily.
  3. Caregivers need to see a record of the patient’s medication history.

Research: Which characteristics would make a companion web app helpful to a community of caregivers?

Engineering Goal: Design of a web application for the Smart Pillbox to assist patients and their caregivers in adhering to medication schedules

  • Facilitate easy communication among multiple caregivers
  • Enable easy changes to medications and schedules
  • Allow all caregivers to see a daily log of patient’s pill intake

Design Criteria:

  1. Smart Pillbox communicates with the web app when the patient forgets to take medications
  2. Digital representation of the pillbox to visually indicate which pills to place in which pill cavities
  3. Allow caregivers to see a daily log of patient’s pill intake

Final Web-App Prototype

Homepage once user is registered
Homepage once user is registered
Editable page displaying prescriptions and their names, quantities, doctors, and alarm times
Editable page displaying prescriptions and their names, quantities, doctors, and alarm times
With the followers page users can control which caregivers are notified with reminders when pills are not taken
With the followers page users can control which caregivers are notified with reminders when pills are not taken

How the Pill-Buddy Platform Works:

PillboxPt2_flowchart

Technologies Used:

  • Sublime2 text editor
  • Python Flask
  • A micro-framework for Python, based on Werkzeug and Jinja2
  • Includes bindings for templating engine Jinja2 by default
  • Jinja2 templating docs
  • A modern, designer-friendly templating language for Python
  • Heroku cloud application platform

Web-App Code Organization:

Code-organization-art

Features to work on:

  1. For the Smart Pillbox:
    1. Change casing design for greater flexibility in number of pill cavities
    2. Make each pill cavity an individually lockable module
    3. Explore options other than light sensors to detect pills
  2. For the web application:
    1. Add a real-time log of medications the patient has already taken
    2. Allow for variable alarm times
  3. New wearable component:
    1. Create a wearable device to notify patient when to take medication