Intelligent medicine case system with distributed RFID readers

In Japan, the number of elderly recipients who take medicines regularly has been increasing due to population aging. Since they have many risks of incorrect medication, we have developed the intelligent medicine case system (iMec System) for assisting their caretakers in medication monitoring. The system confirms the type, quantity and timing of medication every time a recipient picks medicines up. And then, the system notifies the caretakers about the adequacy of the type, quantity, and timing. Since the way of medication is also specified on prescription by their doctors, we have strengthened the system so that it confirms the way of medication when the recipient picks medicines up. For realizing the function, we placed RFID readers in the iMec and the recipient´s house. The readers measure the movement of objects such as medicines, foods, drinks, dishes, utensils. By using the information, the iMec could evaluate the adequacy about how to take medicines. We confirmed that the new system was able to recognize foods, drinks and utensils by experiments. In this paper, we propose an adequacy evaluation method by applying fuzzy inference.