DoseShield – Smart Medicine Safety Box

A secure IoT medicine box that authenticates users, monitors storage conditions, tracks dose access, and alerts caregivers about missed doses.

Comment

Inspiration

Medication management is often treated as a simple reminder problem. However, a reminder alone cannot verify who accessed the medicine, whether medicines were stored under appropriate conditions, or whether a scheduled dose was actually removed.

This inspired us to develop DoseShield, a secure smart medicine safety box that combines physical security, environmental monitoring, and medication dose-event tracking in one IoT system.

What we are building

DoseShield is designed to:

  • Authenticate an authorized user before granting access.
  • Monitor temperature and humidity inside the medicine storage area.
  • Provide scheduled medication reminders.
  • Detect and log medicine access/dose removal.
  • Identify potentially missed scheduled doses.
  • Send alerts to a caregiver when configured conditions require attention.
  • Provide a digital history of medication-access events.

The system is designed as a medication-management and monitoring tool. It does not diagnose medical conditions or determine medication dosage.

How it works

The physical prototype uses an ESP32 as the main controller. Authentication is handled using a fingerprint sensor or RFID. A servo mechanism controls access to the medicine compartment, while an RTC manages scheduled medication times.

Environmental sensors monitor storage conditions. A load cell with an HX711 module, or an alternative compartment sensor, can be used to detect medicine removal. Events are then logged through a connected software dashboard.

The basic workflow is:

Authenticate → Check Schedule → Unlock Compartment → Detect Dose Access → Log Event → Evaluate Missed Dose → Alert

Technical Approach

Our planned prototype combines:

  • ESP32-based embedded control
  • Fingerprint/RFID authentication
  • RTC-based scheduling
  • Temperature and humidity sensing
  • Dose-access detection
  • OLED/LCD feedback
  • Servo-based locking
  • Wi-Fi connectivity
  • Cloud-based event logging
  • Web dashboard and notifications

Challenges

The main engineering challenges are expected to be reliable dose detection, sensor calibration, maintaining operation during network interruptions, preventing false alerts, and securing user and medication-related data.

We plan to address these through sensor calibration, local event handling, retry mechanisms, confirmation logic, and appropriate authentication and access-control mechanisms.

What we hope to learn

Through this project, we aim to gain practical experience in IoT hardware integration, embedded programming, sensor fusion, secure authentication, cloud connectivity, data logging, and healthcare-oriented product design.

Our goal is to turn a common medicine-storage concept into a more secure and connected system that provides useful information beyond a simple reminder.

Built With

Share this project:

Updates

Submission history