ABSTRACT:

This paper presents a Smart Medicine Dispenser (SMD) for Hypertension. The main purpose of this
system is to help the patients, primarily those people who suffers hypertension, take their medications
on time in an easy way without the possibility of missing pills, also reduce the risk of over or under
dosing accidentally. Not taking medications correctly can have serious consequences such as delayed
recovery, illness, and even death. Hypertension is a serious medical condition that significantly
increasesthe risks of heart, brain, kidney and the other diseases. According to World Health
Organization (WHO) an estimated 1.13 billion people worldwide have hypertension. Smart Medicine
Dispenser (SMD) could solve such problems by informing and alerting the patients to take the
appropriate dose at the right time. Also, it provide direct communication between the system and the
patients through a mobile app so that the patient or user can monitor or can notify if the medicine
compartment needs to refill. In addition SMD provides the patients or the users with a touch interface
available as an application on their smartphones which will allow them to remotely manage and control
pill schedules and usage data.

KEYWORDS:
Smart Medicine; Dispenser; Android app; microcontroller; Pillsy

INTRODUCTION:
We take medications to diagnose, treat, or prevent illness. They come in lots of different forms and we
take them in many different ways. You may take a drug yourself, or a healthcare provider may give it to
you [1]. For many people, remembering to take a daily medication can be the difference between life
and death. Yet, people forget all the time [2]. Now a landmark study from North Carolina State
University has found that changes in daily behavior have a significant effect on whether we remember
to take our medication – and that these changes influence older and younger adults differently [3]. It is
very likely for them to forget to take their pills on time. Especially, those who take multiple
medications at the same time. Also, they might take wrong dosage accidentally which may lead to
unfortunate consequences such as death [4]. High blood pressure or hypertension, commonly referred
to as the “silent killer,” often has no symptoms and greatly increases risk for heart attackand stroke.
Many patients with hypertension are prescribed medication to help lower blood pressure levels, but
many fail to take them properly [5].

And according to a recent study published in the European Heart Journal, not taking blood pressure
medications properly drastically increases stroke risk in patients with hypertension.This study followed
more than 73,500 Finish patients with high blood pressure for 10 years, tracking which patients took
their medication as prescribed and which took them improperly or not at all. After 10 years, researchers
found that poorer medication adherence increased stroke risk in both the short- and long-term. Over the
10-year period, patients failing to adhere to blood pressure lowering medications were 3-7 times more
likely to suffer a stroke than patients adhering to medications, depending on the combination of
prescribed medications. Blood pressure medications are one of the best weapons against hypertension
and when taken properly, can help control blood pressure levels and reduce risk of heart attack and
stroke. However, medications can only do their jobs when taken correctly, which means taking the
proper dose of medications at the right time and in the right way for as long as you’re supposed to.
Failing to adhere to medication can not only render the drug ineffective, it can be dangerous and pose a
threat to your health [6-7].
The main purpose of SMD system is to help the patients, primarily those people that suffers
hypertension to take their medications on time in an easy way without the possibility of missing pills.
It can also reduce the risk of over or under dosing accidentally. The smart medicine dispenser (SMD)
could solve such problems by informing and alerting the patients to take the appropriate dose at the
right time. Also aside from hypertension SMD has compartments for other medicine or vitamins to be
taken everyday.

The researchers wants to promote a system that can ease the burden of many patients or users of
forgetfullness in taking medicine for hypertension everyday. The Smart Medicine Dispenser or we call
it “Pillsy” for the product name in the future gives convenient way of taking medicine and alerting the
users when the time comes to take the medicine just by pressing the button so that Pillsy will be able to
dispense the medicine. Pillsy have 5 compartments or cartridge serves as container inside the device
and LCD displace outside to monitor when will be the next dispensing time, it will also it will notify
through a txt message, through app or by a buzzer and a blinking LED.

Related Literature
This section reviews some of the existing literature and worls concerning the several types of medicine
dispensers available in the market that have been produced by different companies.

An electronic pill dispenser realized using PIC microcontroller with keypad and an LCD that lets the
user schedule his/her pills manually on a plate. It dispenses the pills and generates and audio alarm to
alert the patient. Also, an SMS is sent to the caregiver phone number in case the pill wasn’t taken [8].
A pill dispenser was created using a combination of infrared sensors and Arduino microcontroller with
alarm system to help the patients take their pills at the correct time. The alarm system was implemented
using a popup notification in smartphone [9].
Another pill dispenser that is created using Arduino microcontroller that dispenses only one pill at a
time to prvent overdose. Then notifies the user via SMS that the pill is ready to be taken. Also, it was
connected to an androidapplications that is used by the caretaker to edit the dates and times of the pills
to be dispensed [10].
The said dispensers can stored monthly medicine and refill it every month others refill it every week it
depend on the capacity of the compartment. The proposed SMD system called Pillsy take the idea of
IoT based smart medicine dispenser to the next level as it has some functionalities that are not included
in any other automated dispensers. An android app use to register the user account, to register what
type of medicine should be load to the Pillsy and what is the schedule of each pills and how much pills
should be dispense each time. There is a code for able to register to the Pillsy also Pillsy should
connected to the wifi because the system is IoT based.

Theoretical Framework
This study was anchored on the idea of