DIY medication tracker (Ultrahack 2017 project)
When inhaler user come to doctor, he may not remember how often he used device.
Simple DIY tracking could provide exact data, and show trends.
E.g. User was supposed to use inhaler twice a day, but lsat 2 month he skipped half of mornings. Doctor may adjust dose and when medication should be taken based on that data.
User add NFC sticker to inhaler. Each time when he use, he scan it with IoT device (arduino based). Data is stored on server, and could be retreived or analyzed. Patient completely owns the data.
See concept.png
NodeMCU (arduino+wifi), RFID-RC522, bunch of wires and few leds and buttons.
See wires.jpg for assembled version.
Java, Spring Boot, Mongo, Gradle
Adding 2 leds, could add reminder to take medicine (based on analyzed data).
Adding few buttons (very bad, bad, normal, good, very good) will allow to track patient condition and map it to inhaler use. This could provide valuable insight to doctors and facilitate discussion.
Kids could be more tempted to use medication properly, as it provide feedback, and they could build system themselves.
Parents will better understand how their kids use inhalers.
Companies that manufacture inhalers could attach NFC tag and provide inexpensive service to host data.
Companies may provide tracking boxes (record additional data: feeling, etc).
Companies could provide mobile app, that on NFC phone can provide full solution.
DIY medication tracker
Patients themselves are responsible for using inhalers. There are no way to force them, especially kids. With modern technologies we could inspire and assist them. Aim of this project is to make inexpensive DIY tools available to consumers to enhance their treatment. One way would be to make inhaler usage tracking system based on nfc tag/reader and UI that show nice charts. Opensource API, possibility of self hosted/DIY. Plan to use NFC and d3.js Visualizing data may help patients and doctor to discover anomalies in usage and find why it was not used in certain days. (Analytics done right) In return patients could share data about usages for society benefit on-demand basis.
Technologies (draft)
- NFC (no need to modify devices)
- arduino/raspberyPi/smartphone code as NFC reader
- d3.js for visualization
- java (or something else) for backend
Possible pivots based on team skills:
- aimed for kids, showing them their usage and nice charts, maybe show when others used it, to remove fears
- aimed for elderly people, include notifications, alerts, etc
- what else?