Magic Pill Club

Inspiration

Patient Engagement is the next blockbuster drug. Medication adherence is around 60% on average meaning patients only take the drugs 60% of the time they are prescribed to them. This lack of adherence costs $300B in increased costs. We want to solve this by leveraging technology.

What it does

We have built a smart pill box that can detect when a pill bottle is open and closed. We have also built a mobile app that gamifies the experience of taking pills. The mobile app reminds patient to take the recommendation dosage at scheduled time. The patient is continuously reminded every 5 mins until the box is opened.

How I built it

Smart Pill Box was built using the Photon wi-fi development kit. We use the light sensor to detect when the pill box was opened and record the timestamp.

The mobile app was built on iOS platform. We used magnet for scheduling the messages to be sent.

Challenges I ran into

Everyone in our team has a software background. Hardware was something new. The photon kit made it easy to get started. Connecting to and configuring the dev kit took time.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

Learning to program on the Photon dev kit! A new skill under our belt.

What I learned

Getting the photon kit to connect to the phone took lot longer than expected. Spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to connect as the wifi was not very co-operative.