DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION OF A LOW-COST STANDALONE MEDICATION-REMINDER SMARTWATCH FOR ELDERLY PATIENTS: PROTOTYPE DEVELOPMENT AND FUNCTIONAL TESTING

Medication non-adherence is a typical issue in elderly patients who often face challenging dosing schedules, age-induced memory decline, and sensory impairment. Several digital health solutions, like Smartphone apps and commercial smart watches, have been suggested to provide on-time medication consumption. However, these systems are often expensive, technically complex, or require continued internet and Smartphone connectivity, hampering their applicability in older adults in low-resource settings.

In this paper, we propose the concept of an inexpensive and discrete smart watch-like device that provides time-based wrist-worn medication reminders for elderly patients. The proposed system employs an ESP32 microcontroller to provide the timing, a DS3231 real-time clock (RTC) unit to accurately record time, and a little OLED display to display time and calculated dose times and to send vibrational and audible buzzer warnings according to requirements of the user. An interface is simple to use through menus allowing the caregiver/clinic worker or doctor to preprogram numerous times per day’s prescribed drug doses without using a Smartphone or cloud connection. A prototype of the smart watch was built and functional bench tests were performed to show the ability to trigger the alarm, accurately time alarms, the brightness display of the timer and the reminder logic response under normal operating conditions.

 The initial results of these tests suggest that the device can continuously present visual and auditory cues for the time of drug-intake for all conditions indicated. Although no clinical user test has been undertaken at the moment, the study proves that a low cost standalone medication reminder smart watch for elderly patients is feasible, and forms a base for subsequent usability studies and clinical evaluation of the concept.