Enhancing pharmaceutical packaging through a technology ecosystem to facilitate the reuse of medicines and reduce medicinal waste

The idea of reusing dispensed medicines is appealing to the general public provided its benefits are illustrated, its risks minimized, and the logistics resolved. For example, medicine reuse could help reduce medicinal waste, protect the environment and improve public health. However, the associated technologies and legislation facilitating medicine reuse are generally not available. The availability of suitable technologies could arguably help shape stakeholders’ beliefs and in turn, uptake of a future medicine reuse scheme by tackling the risks and facilitating the practicalities. A literature survey is undertaken to lay down the groundwork for implementing technologies on and around pharmaceutical packaging in order to meet stakeholders’ previously expressed misgivings about medicine reuse (’stakeholder requirements’), and propose a novel ecosystem for, in effect, reusing returned medicines. Methods: A structured literature search examining the application of existing technologies on pharmaceutical packaging to enable medicine reuse was conducted and presented as a narrative review. Results: Reviewed technologies are classified according to different stakeholders’ requirements, and a novel ecosystem from a technology perspective is suggested as a solution to reusing medicines. Conclusion: Active sensing technologies applying to pharmaceutical packaging using printed electronics enlist medicines to be part of the Internet of Things network. Validating the quality and safety of returned medicines through this network seems to be the most effective way for reusing medicines and the correct application of technologies may be the key enabler

Towards fog-driven IoT eHealth:Promises and challenges of IoT in medicine and healthcare

Internet of Things (IoT) offers a seamless platform to connect people and objects to one another for enriching and making our lives easier. This vision carries us from compute-based centralized schemes to a more distributed environment offering a vast amount of applications such as smart wearables, smart home, smart mobility, and smart cities. In this paper we discuss applicability of IoT in healthcare and medicine by presenting a holistic architecture of IoT eHealth ecosystem. Healthcare is becoming increasingly difficult to manage due to insufficient and less effective healthcare services to meet the increasing demands of rising aging population with chronic diseases. We propose that this requires a transition from the clinic-centric treatment to patient-centric healthcare where each agent such as hospital, patient, and services are seamlessly connected to each other. This patient-centric IoT eHealth ecosystem needs a multi-layer architecture: (1) device, (2) fog computing and (3) cloud to empower handling of complex data in terms of its variety, speed, and latency. This fog-driven IoT architecture is followed by various case examples of services and applications that are implemented on those layers. Those examples range from mobile health, assisted living, e-medicine, implants, early warning systems, to population monitoring in smart cities. We then finally address the challenges of IoT eHealth such as data management, scalability, regulations, interoperability, device–network–human interfaces, security, and privacy

Implementation of the IoT-Based Technology on Patient Medication Adherence: A Comprehensive Bibliometric and Systematic Review

The dynamic field of the Internet of Things (IoT) is constantly increasing, providing a plethora of potential integration across various sectors, most notably healthcare. The IoT represents a significant technological leap in healthcare management systems, coinciding with the rising preference for personalized, proactive, cost-effective treatment techniques. This review aimed to thoroughly assess the existing literature through a systematic review and bibliometric analysis, identifying untapped research routes and possible domains for further exploration. The overarching goal was to provide healthcare professionals with significant insights into the impact of IoT technology on Patient Medication Adherence (PMA) and related outcomes. An extensive review of 314 scientific articles on the deployment of IoT within pharmaceutical care services revealed a rising trend in publication volume, with a significant increase in recent years. Pertinently, from the 33 publications finally selected, substantial data support the potential of the IoT to improve PMA, particularly among senior patients with chronic conditions. This paper also comments on various regularly implemented IoT-based systems, noting their unique benefits and limitations. In conclusion, the critical relevance of PMA is highlighted, arguing for its emphasis in future discussions. Furthermore, the need for additional research endeavors is proposed to face and overcome existing constraints and establish the long-term effectiveness of IoT technologies in maximizing patient outcomes

Enabling medicine reuse using a digital time temperature humidity sensor in an internet of pharmaceutical things concept

Medicinal waste due to improper handling of unwanted medicines creates health and environmental risks. However, the re-dispensing of unused prescribed medicines from patients seems to be accepted by stakeholders when quality and safety requirements are met. Reusing dispensed medicines may help reduce waste, but a comprehensive validation method is not generally available. The design of a novel digital time temperature and humidity indicator based on an Internet of Pharmaceutical Things concept is proposed to facilitate the validation, and a prototype is presented using smart sensors with cloud connectivity acting as the key technology for verifying and enabling the reuse of returned medicines. Deficiency of existing technologies is evaluated based on the results of this development, and recommendations for future research are suggested

Intelligent Medicine Kit for Healthcare Monitoring, An IOT Based Solution

Increase in chronic diseases worldwide demands efficient healthcare solutions for maintaining well-beingof people. Treatment requires timely in-take of medicines and strict adherence to routine. This lack of adherenceis estimated to cause many deaths and hospitalizations. If we can get people to take their medications regularly,they won’t develop complications. In addition to improving patient outcomes, medication adherence will reducehealth care costs associated with these conditions. Healthcare monitoring solutions based on Internet of Things(IoT) technology has drawn significant research attention. This paper proposes an IoT based user configurablecustomized intelligent medicine kit augmented with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth Low Energy technologies. It hascapability to detect whether patient is taking all prescribed medicines on fix schedule and intelligentlycommunicates the same to patient and their close relatives using uniquely created Four Tier Notification System(FTNS), thus helping patient to live a healthy life. The paper discusses a novel theme on the functioning of amedical grade device which would consume information from sensor and send it to the central server with amaximum possibility of success using Four Tier Notification System (FTNS). This novel approach discusseshandshaking of connection to the central serve with a fallback mechanism to achieve maximum success of datasynchronization. This paper also discusses how this useful data from medicine kit can help healthcare sector toclosely track patient's physical activities and helps to influence the way healthcare sector operates in future

Intelligent Medicine Box

The fundamental reason for the venture “INTELLIGENT MEDICINE BOX” is to propose the essential thought of programmed medication update, which will help patients take their recommended medication suitably with appropriate dosages. It is a clever plan to help the patient take as much time as is needed and, thus, lessen an opportunity to recuperate from their infection. Specifically, the matured patient takes some unacceptable medication and some unacceptable measurements mistakenly, causing a serious issue. This framework isn’t only useful for an individual but can likewise make a significant commitment to medical clinics. In the present occupied, pushed, and booked life, individuals are experiencing loads of illnesses but can’t recall their medication and timing of it, and here this framework can be of genuine use. This project utilizes an LCD, ARDUINO module, RTC module. AS per the odder gadgets, this smart medicine box is planned in light of a lower cost. Thus, this convenient and monetarily cheaper framework would be useful to each age grou

AAL open source system for the monitoring and intelligent control of nursing homes

[EN] SAFE-ECH is an innovative intelligent AAL open source system for monitoring nursing homes, that creates an Ambient Intelligent environment in a residence by collecting and storing sensor monitoring data, performing intelligent data analysis and specific actions to enhance the safety, comfort and efficient care of aged people. Our system implements open standards of the Open Geospatial Consortium complying with Observations & Measurements Schema (O&M), SensorML and Sensor Web Enablement (SWE) specifications. Our system adapts to the specific needs of each nursing home, integrating the required sensors, actuators, rules and services. It is scalable and allows the management of several residences simultaneously.This research was partially funded by the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme as part of the INTERIoT project under Grant Agreement 687283, and by SAFE-ECH funded by the Spanish Ministerio de Industria, Economía y Competitividad (MINECO) under Grant Agreement RTC-2015-4502-1González-Usach, R.; Collado, V.; Esteve Domingo, M.; Palau Salvador, CE. (2017). AAL open source system for the monitoring and intelligent control of nursing homes. IEEE Systems, Man, and Cybernetics Society. 1-6. https://doi.org/10.1109/ICNSC.2017.8000072S1

Construction of Data Driven Decomposition Based Soft Sensors with Auto Encoder Deep Neural Network for IoT Healthcare Applications

The architecture of IoT healthcare is motivated towards the data-driven realization and patient-centric health models, whereas the personalized assistance is provided by deploying the advanced sensors. According to the procedures in surgery, in the emergency unit, the patients are monitored till they are stable physically and then shifted to ward for further recovery and evaluation. Normally evaluation done in ward doesn’t suggest continuous parameters monitoring for physiological condition and thus relapse of patients are common. In real-time healthcare applications, the vital parameters will be estimated through dedicated sensors, that are still luxurious at the present situation and highly sensitive to harsh conditions of environment. Furthermore, for real-time monitoring, delay is usually present in the sensors. Because of these issues, data-driven soft sensors are highly attractive alternatives. This research is motivated towards this fact and Auto Encoder Deep Neural Network (AutoEncDeepNN) is proposed depending on Health Framework in the internet assisting the patients with trigger-based sensor activation model to manage master and slave sensors. The advantage of the proposed method is that the hidden information are mined automatically from the sensors and high representative features are generated by multiple layer’s iteration. This goal is consistently achieved and thus the proposed model outperforms few standard approaches which are considered like Hierarchical Extreme Learning Machine (HELM), Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) and Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM). It is found that the proposed AutoEncDeepNN method achieves 94.72% of accuracy, 41.96% of RMSE, 34.16% of RAE and 48.68% of MAE in 74.64 ms

IoT Platform for COVID-19 Prevention and Control: A Survey

As a result of the worldwide transmission of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has evolved into an unprecedented pandemic. Currently, with unavailable pharmaceutical treatments and vaccines, this novel coronavirus results in a great impact on public health, human society, and global economy, which is likely to last for many years. One of the lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic is that a long-term system with non-pharmaceutical interventions for preventing and controlling new infectious diseases is desirable to be implemented. Internet of things (IoT) platform is preferred to be utilized to achieve this goal, due to its ubiquitous sensing ability and seamless connectivity. IoT technology is changing our lives through smart healthcare, smart home, and smart city, which aims to build a more convenient and intelligent community. This paper presents how the IoT could be incorporated into the epidemic prevention and control system. Specifically, we demonstrate a potential fog-cloud combined IoT platform that can be used in the systematic and intelligent COVID-19 prevention and control, which involves five interventions including COVID-19 Symptom Diagnosis, Quarantine Monitoring, Contact Tracing & Social Distancing, COVID-19 Outbreak Forecasting, and SARS-CoV-2 Mutation Tracking. We investigate and review the state-of-the-art literatures of these five interventions to present the capabilities of IoT in countering against the current COVID-19 pandemic or future infectious disease epidemics.Comment: 12 pages; Submitted to IEEE Internet of Things Journa