Dispense-A-Pill... er, automatically dispenses pills

If you're having trouble keeping track of what pill to take and when, you might want to turn your attention to the Dispense-A-Pill. Now look, we know that name isn't exactly pure gold, but when you've got a system that lets you store up to 90 days worth of medication and then automatically doles it out on a pre-programmed schedule -- naming conventions can probably take a backseat. The machine -- designed by Dr. Gazi Abdulhay -- can hold eight different types of medication, and the manufacturers plan to rent the units for less than the cost of an emergency call button. Now, if they can just create a system like this for making us lunch, we'll be all set. Check the video after the break to see the device in action.

[Thanks, Yossi]

[Darkroom @ May 22nd 2008 6:07AM]

drugstore cowboy yeeeeee haaww!!!

[Rufus White @ May 22nd 2008 6:19AM]

Great idea, how long before these are installed in clubs?

[Flashpoint @ May 22nd 2008 8:04AM]

ecstacy and mesculine together again

[Vagrant @ May 22nd 2008 6:23AM]

This is a good thing. My parents are still 'with it' enough to take their pills on time, but what's great is that this dispenses the proper pill(s) at the proper interval with an alarm. We'll just see if it's cost prohibitive when it goes on the market.

[caleb @ May 22nd 2008 2:17PM]

Agreed. My grandmother is "with it" enough to handle her pills, however she has had a couple of "episodes" where she has just gotten really confused where this would be great. Unfortunately I think she is taking more than the 8 different medications this thing is designed to handle

[The Apple @ May 22nd 2008 6:48AM]

Seems fun...

[dzhiurgis @ May 22nd 2008 6:56AM]

Now we need pot dispenser :)

[Shinigami @ May 22nd 2008 7:29AM]

The idea is nice but I'd prefer it to have 8 different chambers so I can put my pills myself and the thing just to remind me to take the pills, not dose it for me.

[tiuk @ May 22nd 2008 10:16AM]

You could accomplish that with a ordinary pill dispenser (the kind that's all plastic with compartments for each day) and a watch or cell phone alarm.

[Flashpoint @ May 22nd 2008 8:06AM]

Your pill is not ready until 5:36 PM EST

Please return at the appropriate time to collect your pill.

[Flashpoint @ May 22nd 2008 8:07AM]

this sh*t would turn hardworking Americans into drug addicts.

[OX4 @ May 22nd 2008 8:12AM]

I would've preferred the name "Dispenser o' Pills"

[caleb @ May 22nd 2008 2:18PM]

MiniPharm?

[Brett @ May 22nd 2008 8:39AM]

"eight different types of medication"

Wait i thought we were talking about drugs??? Ohh, you mean helpful drugs.... but how many engadget readers would really need a machine to spit out caffine tablets? Well at least it keeps addictions to a daily set installments only.

I only have two other problems with this device. A) why hasnt someone thought of this before, oh wait, they have with those little plastic weekly container things. and B) How many old people will actually be able to USE this thing? I can see alot of grandkids getting bugged to get grannies meds.

[Frohike @ May 22nd 2008 8:41AM]

I wonder if the thing runs on mains, battery or a combo. I believe it's mains and if so, did they consider what happens when there's a power outage given you've put ALL your meds in the thing?

Not to mention I guess you really wouldn't want to mix up your heart medication, prozac and E tabs into the wrong chambers!

[Bretts02 @ May 22nd 2008 10:10AM]

Frohike,

It runs on mains but uses 'C' batteries as a backup so your power could be out for up to 24 hours and it will continue dispensing properly. As for mixing up medications; the user cannot access more than one pill chamber at a time, so they would not be able to accidentally put them in the wrong places.

[Marco @ May 22nd 2008 10:20AM]

Obviously you've ever dealt with actual people before. No, they may not put it in the wrong *chamber*, but...gasp...what if they pick up the wrong *bottle*? Riddle me that, Batman.

[NNTPgrip @ May 22nd 2008 9:32AM]

It's great until the Fat Boys remove all the pills and play poker with them.

[BMErdin @ May 22nd 2008 10:40AM]

Haha. That's what I was going to say.

[oliver hart @ May 22nd 2008 9:33AM]

these are old news. my mother used to, um, "over-appreciate" her anti-anxiety medication and her doctor offered her one of these over a year ago to keep her on track. Does this one do something different? Maybe the one he offered could only hold 7 medications instead of 8.

[Brett @ May 22nd 2008 10:19AM]

What sets this device apart from others on the market is the fact that no pre-sorting is necessary. When you receive a prescription you simply put the entire supply into the machine and it will handle all of the sorting for each dose. It eliminates the overhead associated with older people trying to sort out their medications into those simple monday-sunday pill boxes.

[Aaron @ May 22nd 2008 10:42AM]

this sort of thing has been around for a while, http://www.compumed.com/

[Rainier @ May 22nd 2008 10:50AM]

I feel like I'm taking crazy pills!

[Eric @ May 22nd 2008 11:10AM]

The IMD2 med dispenser does both the emergency pendant *and* the pill reminders, and holds up to a two-month supply of meds, for about the price of a 36" LCD TV, and it's dead-sexy reliable.

Eldertechnology/Gerontechnology works when the interface is elegant, the error recovery flawless and the experience consistent. My demented 85 year old F-I-L uses the IMD2 quite successfully, and it takes about 20 minutes a week to get the doses right. There's no problem with him needing someone to fetch the pills; a nice lady with a broad midwestern accent says 'Time for your medication; press the red button to dispense" three times a day, repeating the incantation for up to 90 minutes if needed, and the pills come out and he takes 'em. It's that easy. If he doesn't take them for some reason, it locks away the dose and calls us, and keeps calling until it gets a human response.

8 agents doesn't cover the vast majority of the Really Old's med regimens, either. Figure that it doesn't take much wrong with you to get up to 15 agents. Typical aging (Type II diabetes, heart problems, aches and pains) would be a dozen, easily. REALLY complicated (heart failure, cognitive problems, nutrtition deficits) can push that to 25+ different things per day, and the cognitive load of a regimen like that is what leads people into assisted living. If this device was $2500, that's cheaper than a single month in assisted living. If it can keep people in their home for nine months longer (a realistic goal, given that 55% of people in assisted living facilities are there for med management), that's a great ROI, and it's likely that many people could stay out of ALFs for several years with something like this.

E

[Aengeln @ May 22nd 2008 11:32AM]

Nice... Of course, you really shouldn't be travelling. It doesn't look very portable, and what use is a pill dispenser that relies on you being around it all the time?

--A

[SketchPad @ May 22nd 2008 12:31PM]

And such a HUGE screen....elderly narrow sighted people - HUGE font?
Or is it just the coolness factor?

It kind of look like something Jack Lalaine would sell on Home Shopping TV (or something like that) :D

"Look - Juice maker - AND - Pill dispenser all-in-one" Now your pills will taste like heaven (and bring you right off to heaven too)...

[Bretts02 @ May 22nd 2008 12:45PM]

Both The IMD2 and the Comp-u-med require the user or caregiver to sort the meds individually for every single does time. If there are 3 doses a day and the machine is good for 1 month they will need to literally count out all the pills for each of the 90 doses and put them into special cups for the machine to give back to the user later. This is very time consuming and prone to error. the Dispense-A-Pill takes care of all the sorting for you.

[Joe H @ May 22nd 2008 2:01PM]

What would be nice is if someone designed a system like this and worked with a pharmacy company to use pill 'cartridges' of some sort rather than the vials, so that only the pill dispenser could be used to actually get at the pills, so that someone couldn't use overdose before even putting the pills into the machine.

[bouv @ May 22nd 2008 4:34PM]

Dude, when I had my intro. to engineering design class back in 2001, this is exactly the type of thing we designed and built a prototype of. It wasn't nearly as fancy looking, but we made a system to dispense four types of pills (hey, just a prototype,) and was controlled by a laptop hooked up through a parallel port.

The hardest part was making it so that any size/shape of pill could be used and not jam the machine with a big one, or accidentally give a doulbe/triple dose of smaller ones.

[Scott @ May 22nd 2008 5:16PM]

Nice idea, but it doesn't support enough pills. My father currently takes 14 different medications a day.

[01 @ May 22nd 2008 7:07PM]

This is great; AIDS medication and people taking numerous anti-depressants immediately come to mind as being able to get the most benefit out of this. Good job to the manufacturers.