Systems and methods for managing medication-dispensing canisters

• US 8,655,486 B2
• Filed: 11/16/2011
• Issued: 02/18/2014
• Est. Priority Date: 11/16/2011
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Translogic Corporation (Midea Group Co., Ltd)
• Original Assignee: Talyst Incorporated
• Inventors: Sanders, Ron, Singh, Harpreet, Mckeown, Frank, Richardson, Paul, Manning, John M., Clarke, Darcy O.
• Primary Examiner(s): Waggoner, Timothy
• Application Number:
  US13/298,172
• Publication Number:
  US 20130123977A1
• Time in Patent Office: 825 Days
• Field of Search: 705/2, 221/241, 700/231, 700/232, 700/241, 700/242
• US Class Current: 700/242
• CPC Class Codes: A61J 7/02 Pill counting devices
• CPC Class Codes: G16H 20/13 delivered from dispensers

Abstract

Systems and methods for managing canisters used to automatically dispense medication are provided. Canisters are configurable via a design process and a build process to accurately dispense a variety of medications. Design profiles are created and stored by a canister management system, and are federated to workstations used to build and fill the canisters, and to workstations used to dispense the medication. Information related to the build process, the fill process, and the dispense process is also federated by the system. The system also enables the transmission of other types of messages between client applications on the workstations and the canister management system. The system is useful to federate data regardless of a structure of a supply chain used to design, build, distribute, and use the canisters.

Claims

1. A computer-readable medium having computer-executable instructions stored thereon that, if executed by one or more processors of a computing device, cause the computing device to perform actions for managing canister data, the actions comprising:

storing a design profile that includes configuration settings usable to configure a canister to dispense a medication;

storing a build profile that includes information associated with a canister built based on the design profile; and

storing a fill profile that includes information associated with filling the canister with the medication.

2. The computer-readable medium of claim 1, wherein the actions further comprise storing a dispense profile that includes information associated with dispensing the medication from the canister.

3. The computer-readable medium of claim 2, wherein the actions further comprise receiving the dispense profile from a canister dispense workstation.

4. The computer-readable medium of claim 1, wherein the actions further comprise receiving the design profile from a canister design workstation.

5. The computer-readable medium of claim 1, wherein the actions further comprise:

transmitting the design profile to a canister build workstation in response to a request containing a medication identifier associated with the design profile; and

receiving the build profile from the canister build workstation.

6. The computer-readable medium of claim 1, wherein the actions further comprise:

transmitting the build profile to a canister fill workstation in response to a request containing a canister identifier associated with the build profile; and

receiving the fill profile from the canister fill workstation.

7. The computer-readable medium of claim 1, wherein the actions further comprise receiving a request for a design profile, a build profile, or a fill profile from a canister messaging system that communicatively couples one or more canister workstations to the canister management system.

8. The computer-readable medium of claim 1, wherein the actions further comprise causing a build label to be printed and affixed to the canister, wherein the build label includes information from the build profile.

9. The computer-readable medium of claim 1, wherein the actions further comprise causing a fill label to be printed and affixed to the canister, wherein the fill label includes information from the fill profile.

10. A system, comprising:

a canister management system, including;

one or more master profile data stores; and

a canister data engine communicatively coupled to the plurality of master profile data stores;

a canister messaging system communicatively coupled to the canister management system, the canister messaging system including;

one or more local profile data stores; and

a canister messaging engine communicatively coupled to the canister data engine and the one or more local profile data stores; and

one or more canister workstations configured to;

request profile information associated with a canister from the canister data engine or the canister messaging engine; and

submit new profile information to the canister data engine or the canister messaging engine.

11. The system of claim 10, wherein the one or more canister workstations are further configured to:

determine that desired profile information associated with a canister is not available from either the canister data engine or the canister messaging engine; and

obtain the desired profile information from the canister.

12. The system of claim 11, wherein the desired profile information is obtainable from a label on the canister.

13. The system of claim 12, wherein the desired profile information is printed in a machine-readable format or a human-readable format on the label on the canister.

14. The system of claim 10, wherein the canister messaging engine is configured to:

receive a request from a canister workstation for profile information;

in response to determining that a local profile data store includes the requested information, transmitting the requested information to the canister workstation; and

in response to determining that no local profile data store includes the requested information, transmitting a request for the requested information to the canister data engine.

15. The system of claim 10, wherein the canister management system and the canister messaging system are operated by separate entities.

16. A method for dispensing a medication from a configurable canister, the method comprising:

determining one or more canister configuration settings suitable to configure a canister to dispense the medication;

storing the canister configuration settings in a design profile;

building a canister based on the design profile;

storing information related to the building of the canister in a build profile;

filling the canister with the medication;

storing information related to the filling of the canister in a fill profile; and

dispensing the medication using the canister.

17. The method of claim 16, further comprising affixing a label to the canister, the label including the canister configuration settings in a machine-readable format or a human-readable format.

18. The method of claim 17, further comprising transmitting the design profile to a canister data engine for storage in a master design profile data store, and wherein building the canister based on the design profile includes requesting the design profile from the canister data engine.

19. The method of claim 18, wherein dispensing the medication using the canister includes:

obtaining the canister configuration settings stored in the design profile associated with the canister; and

using the canister configuration settings to dispense the medication.

20. The method of claim 19, wherein obtaining the canister configuration settings comprises:

in response to detecting that the canister data engine is available, obtaining the canister configuration settings by requesting the design profile from the canister data engine; and

in response to detecting that the canister data engine is not available, obtaining the canister configuration settings from a label affixed to the canister.