PillPal

Changing lives, One pill at a time
Physical Prototype of PillPal

Inspiration

Medication non-adherence is incredibly common in Singapore—60% of adults miss their doses, often due to forgetfulness or poor medical literacy. This leads to repeated counselling and poorer patient outcomes, contributing to mental strain and longer hours for pharmacists and other healthcare professionals. Upon speaking to pharmacists, we aimed to design a solution that supports both patients and pharmacists by making medication adherence simple, reliable, and accessible while ensuring integration into current workflows and productivity improvements to minimise the friction of adoption.

What it does

PillPal is more than a pill dispenser. It can:

Send smart reminders across device, SMS, and HealthHub and dispenses medication
Auto-log doses into a provider dashboard synced with NEHR/HealthHub
Provide a multilingual AI voice assistant to explain usage and safety
Support patient-provider communication with auto-drafted replies for healthcare professionals
Give pharmacists dashboards to track adherence trends at a glance

How we built it

Dispenser Design: VizcomAI + multiple user feedback cycles to refine usability
Dispenser Creation: Prototyping and refinement in Fusion360 with pharmacist feedback
Hardware: Ergonomic, multi-chamber dispenser, prototyped in Fusion360, refined with pharmacist feedback, and 3D-printed
Software/Backend: n8n workflow automation, synced to mocked HealthHub and Epic systems. Deployed AI agents on n8n with tool access to Google Sheets as knowledge database and Gmail to read and write emails using Grok LLM.
AI Layer: Grok LLM for patient queries + ElevenLabs for voice input/output
Frontend: React + Vite dashboard for providers

Challenges we ran into

Ensuring smooth integration with current healthcare workflows to minimise the time and effort involved in real-world usage
Balancing PDPA compliance with effective communication
Designing for elderly patients with low technological literacy while maintaining advanced features
Integrating multiple systems—hardware, AI, automation, and provider dashboards—seamlessly
Avoiding scope creep while addressing real pharmacist pain points

Accomplishments that we’re proud of

Built a functional prototype that combines adherence tracking, reminders, AI literacy support, and provider integration
Designed PillPal to seamlessly integrate into Singapore’s healthcare ecosystem (HealthHub + NEHR) and provide personalised medication management plans based on patients' own records
Positive validation from a senior pharmacist that PillPal could save time, reduce burnout, and improve outcomes
Designed with inclusivity in mind—elderly-friendly, multilingual, and low-literacy accessible

What we learned

Importance of balancing introduction of new tools and technology to improve patient care while minimising burnout by raising productivity of healthcare professionals
Medication adherence is multifactorial—forgetfulness, literacy, and communication all play roles
Human-centered design and co-creation with healthcare professionals are key
Simple, empathetic design choices can be as impactful as advanced tech
The importance of building for scalability while staying grounded in patient privacy and provider workflows