medBuddy

poster
Iteraction model with the human. This should just show the vision and does not represent the current coding status.
Iteraction model for the external triggered actions (Timer). This is just a vision and does not represent the current coding status.

Inspiration

Atleast once in their life, everyone forgets to take their prescribed pills. For people with smartphones, there a plenty of apps, helping you to keep track of your medication´. We needed a special pogram that

Seniors without a smartphone, have a hard time to keep track of their prescribed drugs. Especially as they often rake several pills at multiple times a day**. Even for seniors with a good memory, it can be very challenging to take all their pillall at the right time.

So we aimed to build a device for elderly people, which

helps remind people to take their medication
it is handicap accessible (voice activation)
and is intuitive to use.

To make sure that seniors can use this devices as long as possible, we avoided any filigree tactile interaction (shaking hands) and small displays (loss of sight), by using the Amazon Alexa-platform, which is purely based on verbal interaction. We put a strong focus on the intuitive interface of the device. It is a clear step-by-step interface (see image), where in every step you get the possibility to ask for help.

What it does

Alexa tells you when and what pill you should take, like an alarm clock for pills. The information is based on the data you gave to Alexa (speech based). It can also generate a report, about when you forgot to take your pills.

Interface Workflow (see also picture representation above):

During the first setup medBuddy asks you for your current prescriptions (name, quantity and frequency) and the next appointment with your doctor.
Every time you need to take a pill, Alexa reminds you of taking it by speaking to you.
You than have the possibility to take your pill right away or postpone the taking for 15 minutes.
Alexa asks you for a confirmation whether you took your pill.
One day before your appointment with the doctor, Alexa can give you a report of when you took your pills and when you missed it.
After the appointment Alexa will ask you for your next appointment with your doctor and if there where any changes in your prescription.

How we built it

We used the Amazon Echo with the Alexa skill kit in combination with AWS lambda function.

For triggering the Alexa (see challenges) we used the RaspberryPi connected to a mongodb database. Which we synchronize with the data of the Alexa environment.

Challenges we ran into

We encounter that Alexa does not (yet) support actions triggered by a timer or an external signal. So we had to engineer our own solution to this problem. We used a Rasberry Pi, which talks to Alexa to activate it. This made the project much more complex then expected.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We got the first basic interaction (MVP)** with the user for our idea and created a device which tackles a serious problem of elderly people.

What we learned

We figured out how to use the Alexa environment and learned about the (current) limitations.

What's next for medBuddy

Implementing the full interaction model according to the graphics shown above (link).
Extensive testing to ensure the reliability of the system.
Once Amazon introduced the time-triggered-action (already announced), we can get rid of the additional Raspberry Pi, which makes the app cheaper and easy to distribute.