Methods and systems for cloud based usage monitoring and adaptive enforcement for medications

• US 9,251,314 B2
• Filed: 07/11/2013
• Issued: 02/02/2016
• Est. Priority Date: 08/21/2012
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Wellocity Incorporated
• Original Assignee: Wellocity Incorporated
• Inventors: Kanagala, Sameer
• Primary Examiner(s): Lim, Steven
• Assistant Examiner(s): SHERWIN, RYAN W
• Application Number:
  US13/940,227
• Publication Number:
  US 20140058560A1
• Time in Patent Office: 936 Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: A61J 1/00 Containers specially adapted for medical or pharmaceutical purposes capsules or the like for oral use A61J3/07; specially adapted for surgical or diagnostic appliances or instruments A61B50/30; containers for radioactive substances G21F5/00
• CPC Class Codes: G16H 15/00 ICT specially adapted for medical reports, e.g. generation or transmission thereof
• CPC Class Codes: G16H 20/13 delivered from dispensers
• CPC Class Codes: G16H 40/67 for remote operation
• CPC Class Codes: G16H 80/00 ICT specially adapted for facilitating communication between medical practitioners or patients, e.g. for collaborative diagnosis, therapy or health monitoring

Abstract

A cloud based system that constantly monitors the consumption of each medication by an individual, specifies medication regimes and schedules and provides a means of enforcing compliance based on both local and cloud based intelligence. Enforcing compliance to a medication schedule is achieved through complex logic that correlates events from the medication bottles; behavior learned from the individual, individual'"'"'s schedules and geo-location. The system employs this complex logic per medication and generates a variety of email, phone call, SMS, MMS, voice messages, audio, visual and multimedia cues and alerts to enforce compliance. These same alerts are also used by multiple caregivers, who can further reinforce compliance by the patient via similar types of communications.

Claims

1. A system for monitoring usage of medication and adaptively enforcing compliance with a medication schedule comprising:

a medication dispenser configured to generate an event indicating one or more of an opening of the dispenser, a closing of the dispenser, or a change in weight of contents of the dispenser;

a computing device coupled to the medication dispenser over a wireless network and configured to receive the event from the medication dispenser;

an Internet based server coupled to the computing device over a wired or wireless network and configured to receive the event from the computing device;

wherein the Internet based server is configured to generate an alert if an event is not received during a predetermined time period;

wherein the computing device is configured to generate in response to the alert another event indicating the consumption or cancellation of a medication;

wherein the computing device comprises a global positioning system (GPS) unit to generate a GPS location of the computing device; and

wherein the Internet based server correlates the GPS location of the computing device and a location of the medication dispenser to adapt one or more medication schedules to ensure close proximity of the computing device to the medication dispenser to allow medication consumption.