Our First Design Meeting

We just had out first official team meeting. In recitation last week, we agreed to bring a minimum of three designs per person to the meeting. Our goal was to explain our designs to each other, consolidate the ideas, and create a design that encompasses the best parts of everyone’s drawings.

Our designs shared many qualities. We all used a fingerprinting sensor, instead of a keypad (for typing in a password), because this was something we discussed beforehand. The majority of the sketches also used a touch screen. We agreed that touch screens seem to be where technology is heading—cell phones, iPods, and virtually all new technology seem to have one—and also, when using a touch screen, we do not need to waste space on a keypad for typing in dose requests or passwords. We plan to have our touch screen resemble the iPhone: it will have a touch screen keypad appear when the patient needs to type something.

We spent a significant amount of time this meeting discussing how the pills will be released from the device. The patient cannot just reach their fingers into the device and take as many pills as he or she wants. Such actions can cause overdose. So how can we find a way to release only one pill (or however many pills constitute a dose) to the patient? Again, we returned to the metaphor of the gumball machine. When someone places a quarter into the gumball machine, only one ball rolls out: the person does not have access to any of the other gumballs. We actually looked up videos of gumball machines dispensing balls as we brainstormed ways to apply this process to our medical device. We finally came up with a solution. The bottom of our device will contain a little circular wheel with an indent. One pill can fit into this indent. When the patient requests a pill, the wheel will turn and deposit the pill into a small opening at the bottom of the device. (A small motor will run this wheel). The patient cannot access any other pills other than the one that was dispensed, just as in a gumball or candy machine. We were very excited about this idea!

We also brainstormed a lot about batteries. We decided that our device will use lithium ion batteries, and the batteries will be placed in a small nook in the corner. One issue we did not resolve, however, is the possibility that the batteries will die. Is it enough to trust the patient to recharge the batteries? Or should our device contain some sort of secondary power, just in case the patient is careless and allows the batteries to die? We need to continue to discuss this issue.

In our next meeting (which will be during recitation), we will continue to work on our final sketch.