Pills in the bracelet
TPU students develop a bracelet reminding the patient about taking medications
Sophomores of Tomsk Polytechnic University, studying along the trajectory of elite technical education (ETO), are developing a "smart" PillBand bracelet, with which the patient will not forget to take often vital medications. Tablets and capsules can be carried in the bracelet, so that the necessary medicines are always at hand, or rather, on the hand. And for those who forget to take medications on time, the developers create a separate version of the bracelet, which will notify the patient that it is time to take the drug.
The "smart" bracelet is being developed by a team of sophomores of Tomsk Polytechnic University, studying along the trajectory of IT. These are students of the Institute of Physics and Technology Evgeny Sukhanov, Vladimir Yelkin, Yulia Minina and a student of the Energy Institute Kirill Chebotarev.
"According to statistics, about 10 thousand people die every day on our planet due to the fact that they could not take a pill at a certain time. Diseases and situations are different. Someone may not have the drug at hand, or the person will simply forget to take it. This is especially true for people whose diseases are associated with forgetfulness or partial memory loss. It is especially difficult for such patients to monitor their medication intake on their own. To solve this problem, we decided to create a bracelet that will allow a person to always have access to the right drug, and will notify forgetful people that they need to take medicine, " says Evgeny Sukhanov.
The bracelet works as follows: a person places tablets in its cells in advance and sets the time of their reception in the device settings. At the right time, a signal sounds, and the person independently takes the tablet from the cell. The sound signal is turned off automatically.
"There is also a version without electronic stuffing. It is intended, first of all, for those cases when a person may become unexpectedly ill. With the help of our bracelet, he will be able to quickly and independently get the medicine and take it – the mechanism of opening and closing the bracelet is very simple," adds Vladimir Yelkin.
To date, students have already created a prototype of a "smart" bracelet. Now the polytechnics are working on creating the first prototype of the device.
The guys note that there are direct analogues of such a "smart" bracelet on the international market, but they have certain disadvantages that will not be in the domestic version of the device. For example, one of the main problems of foreign bracelets is that they are designed for small tablets of a certain diameter.
"The biggest tablet that will fit into the foreign analogues of our bracelet is an Aspirin tablet. Tablets of a larger diameter or capsules in such a bracelet will no longer fit in size. Our development provides that medicines can be of different forms, – Kirill Chebotarev notes. – In addition, foreign analogues must first be removed from the hand before taking the drug, while our bracelet remains on the patient's hand all the time. So, he won't drop it, he won't lose it, he won't break it accidentally."
TPU students are advised by scientists and doctors from one of the best universities in Moscow.
"Together we are working on the safety issues of some small details of the bracelet, as well as the specifics of using different versions of the device for different groups of the population," concludes Yulia Minina.
Recently, the development of polytechnics took third place in the LiveScience section of the federal accelerator of technology startups GenerationS. TPU students received 150 thousand rubles for the implementation of their development.
The money received, the authors say, will be spent on further refinement of the "smart" bracelet and its subsequent commercialization.
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09.03.2017