Note: Descriptions are shown in the official language in which they were submitted.
NOVEL MEDICATION DISPSENSER
FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The invention is directed to a device to help patients handle and keep track
of multiple medications,
more specifically, to a pharmaceutical formulation dispenser.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
The most common problems encountered in the health care system is patient
compliance. Patients
might do the following: continue to take medications that has been stopped by
the doctor; continue to take
medications that has expired but they still have it in their stock; take the
wrong strength of the medication;
take the medication at the wrong time; mixing up their medications leading to
drug-drug interactions; taking
their medications with or without food leading to drug-food interaction;
taking another patient's medication
by error if they live in the same facility; forgetting to take their
medications all together.
Patient's non-compliance is usually due to: ageing (as people grow older they
tend to be more
forgetful; disability (whether cognitive or physical); poor communication with
appropriate health care
provider; and carelessness.
The consequences of non-compliance can be detrimental to both patient and the
economy.
Researchers have shown that the impact of non-compliance on patient outcomes.
Each year drug non-
compliance is the cause of: 10% of all hospital admissions; 25% of hospital
admissions for the elderly; 23%
of all nursing home admissions; and adverse drug reactions are a leading cause
of patient mortality.
Not only will closing the medication adherence gap be expected to improve the
quality of
healthcare, and promote enhanced patient outcomes but it is also expected to
encourage better chronic care
management as well as also significantly reducing the overall cost to Canadian
healthcare system.
Moreover, some financial impact on the healthcare system from medication non-
adherence is
estimated to annually cost of the Canadian healthcare system between $7
billion and $9 billion. These costs
include additional physician visits, extra laboratory tests, additional drug
therapy, hospital ER visits,
hospital admissions and short-term disability insurance payments.
Current approaches to improve compliance: current weekly organizers have the
same layout in
terms of days of the week and number of doses per day. They are known as
blister packs and commonly
called bubble packs. However, these blister packs are filled in by hand. The
tablets are placed in the palm
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of the hand and filled one by one into the designated slots increasing the
chances of contamination. The
blister packs are available as one-piece equivalent to a one-week supply.
There are increased chances of
error as the pills could be misplaced during the filling process. If a
patient's medication regimen is altered,
the entire blister pack has to be deblistered and refilled right from the
beginning. During the process of
filling the pills may be scattered or dropped on the floor thus increasing the
waste to the pharmacy and
polluting the environment. It is labour consuming as a technician or a
pharmacist has to fill the medications
one by one into each slot. Interruptions during the filling process increases
the chance of errors placing and
labelling the medications. Blister packs for a whole treatment such as weekly
or monthly treatment tend to
be large and require the somewhat tricky task of popping the blister to
retrieve multiple tablets, capsules or
the like. If one desires is out of the house when it is time for the dosage,
one must either skip the dose,
delay the dose or carry loose tablets until the dosage time.
In light of the above, there is still an unmet need to provide a more
convenient way for a patient to
self-administer medications provided to him/her while taking into account all
of the possible convenience
issues or changes in dosage which may occur during a treatment regimen.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
According to a first aspect of the present invention, there is provided a
pharmaceutical formulation
dispenser comprising a rectangular array within which pouches filled with
medication are inserted for
dispensing medication to the patient at the appropriate time.
According to another aspect of the present invention, there is provided a
procedure to fill the
medication dispenser/pouch organizer. Preferably, each pouch is filled and
sealed prior to being inserted
into their respective compartments in the medication dispenser. Preferably,
this method is performed by a
machine. More preferably, the machine is programmable so as to be capable of
filing medication
pouches. Once the pouches are filled, they are placed into the appropriate
compartment on the medication
dispenser.
According to another aspect of the present invention, there is provided a
medication
dispenser comprising:
- an array of compartments adapted to receive medication; and
- means for identifying each compartment.
Preferably, the medication dispenser further comprises means to alert a user
as to the time to take
a medication from a specified compartment.
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Also preferably, the means for identifying the compartments comprises a first
row located at a top
of said array and a first column located at a side of said array. More
preferably, the medication is present
in each compartment in the form of a pouch. Preferably, the pouch is made of a
plastic material.
According to another aspect of the present invention, there is provided a
method for filling a
medication dispenser for use in a patient's self-medicated treatment program,
said method comprising:
- providing a medication dispenser comprising:
o an array of compartments adapted to receive medication; and
o means for identifying each compartment;
- providing a plurality of pouches adapted to receive medications;
- providing at least two medications;
- filling each one of the plurality of pouches according to medication
needs of the patient's
treatment program;
- sealing each one of the plurality of pouches; and
- inserting each one of the plurality of pouches into the appropriate
compartment on the
medication dispenser.
Preferably, the filling and sealing steps are performed by a machine. More
preferably, the filling
and sealing steps are performed by an automated machine.
According to another aspect of the present invention, there is provided a
method for filling a
medication dispenser for use in a patient's self-medicated treatment program
without human handling of
the medication during the filling process, said method comprising:
- providing a medication dispenser comprising:
o an array of compartments adapted to receive medication; and
o means for identifying each compartment;
- providing a plurality of pouches adapted to receive medications;
- providing at least two medications;
- filling each one of the plurality of pouches according to medication
needs of the patient's
treatment program;
- sealing each one of the plurality of pouches; and
- inserting each one of the plurality of pouches into the appropriate
compartment on the
medication dispenser.
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BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE FIGURES
The present invention may be better understood in consideration of the
following description of
various embodiments of the invention in connection with the accompanying
figures, in which:
Figure 1 is a top perspective view of a medication dispenser for a one-week
supply according to
a preferred embodiment of the present invention;
Figure 2 is a top perspective view of a medication dispenser for a four-week
supply according to
a preferred embodiment of the present invention;
Figure 3 is a top perspective view of a medication dispenser for a two-week
supply according to
a preferred embodiment of the present invention; and
Figure 4 is a top perspective view of a medication dispenser for a two-week
supply according to
a preferred embodiment of the present invention;
DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION
As seen in Figure 1 and according to a preferred embodiment of the present
invention, the basic
structure of a pharmaceutical formulation dispenser (1) for a weekly supply
comprises:
28 compartments (4) arranged in a 4*7 pattern matrix (or rectangular array);
a first labelling bar (3), which can be located either at the top of the
matrix or at the bottom;
a second labelling bar (2) located on the side (which can be either on the
right or the left side of the
matrix)
According to one aspect of the present invention, there is provided a
medication dispenser
comprising:
- an array of compartments, each one of said compartments adapted to
receive at least one pouch
containing medication; and
- means for identifying each compartment;
wherein each one of said compartments having a length, a width and a depth and
comprising a bottom,
a first and a second pair of opposite sides connected to said bottom, said
first pair of opposite sides
being connected to the adjacent sides of the second pair and the sides
defining said length having an
indentation adapted for finger insertion to allow for grasping of said pouch
by a user.
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According to a preferred embodiment, the purpose of the 28 compartments is to
hold the
medication pouches (not shown) in place until they are used by the patient. As
seen in Figure 1, each
one of said compartments (4) having a length, a width and a depth and
comprising a bottom, a first and a
second pair of opposite sides connected to said bottom, said first pair of
opposite sides (5) being
connected to the adjacent sides of the second pair (6) and the sides defining
said length (6) having an
indentation (7) to adapted for finger insertion to allow for grasping of said
pouch by a user.
The compartments are arranged in 4*7 pattern (4 doses a day and 7 days a
week). The
compartments can have various dimensions depending on the model. A preferred
embodiment offers
compartments of the following dimensions: L 4.5 cm / W; 1.5 cm / Depth: 4.5 cm
(Empirical = 1.77 *
0.59 * 1.69 inches). In this embodiment, the top bar is divided into 5
sections identified as follows: Week
# -Breakfast - Lunch - Dinner ¨ Bedtime. The side bar is divided into 7
sections identified as follows: Sun
- Mon - Tue - Wed - Thu - Fri - Sat. The medication dispenser is an array that
contains the medication
pouches. The medication dispenser could hold one week or more (up to 4 weeks)
supply of the
medication.
Using the novel pharmaceutical formulation dispenser according to a preferred
embodiment of the
present invention can help tackle and overcome some or all of the prior art
problems.
According to a preferred embodiment of the present invention, the novel
pharmaceutical
formulation dispenser enables patients to take their medications correctly. It
allows one to organize
medications (and/or other substance that need timely administration) to
improve patient compliance. The
medications are contained in a pouch (also called unit dose, sachet, pill
pack, medication enclosement, etc)
and the pouches are placed in the dispenser according to what time the
contents of the pouches are to be
taken.
According to a preferred embodiment, the pills are filled automatically in
pouches eliminating the
unsanitary conditions associated with hand filling. According to a preferred
embodiment, the pills are
totally separated allowing the patient to carry them as single doses if they
are going on an outing.
According to another preferred embodiment, the process of pouch filling is
automated thus significantly
reducing the chances of misplacement.
According to a preferred embodiment of the present invention, any changes in
patient's medication
regimen could be accommodated easily.
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According to a preferred embodiment of the present invention, the automation
of pouch filling
would eliminate dropping or scattering of pills.
The entire process is much less labour consuming and significantly improves
the workflow while
reducing the chances of errors.
Alternative embodiments of the novel pharmaceutical formulation dispenser can
include the top
bar to be extended to include more variations for example before/after
Breakfast.
Another alternative embodiment of the novel pharmaceutical formulation
dispenser according to
the present invention can comprise an extension of the side bar to include
more than 1 week for example
10/14 days of medication supply.
Figure 2 is a top perspective view of a medication dispenser (21) for a four-
week supply according
to a preferred embodiment of the present invention. Figure 3 is a top
perspective view of a medication
dispenser (31) for a two-week supply according to a preferred embodiment of
the present invention. Figure
4 is a top perspective view of a medication dispenser (41) for a two-week
supply according to a preferred
embodiment of the present invention.
According to a preferred embodiment of the present invention, an alarm using
light and/or sound
is present to remind the patients of the time to take their dose.
The choice of material to manufacture the novel pharmaceutical formulation
dispenser is ideally
plastic, but could be made of wood, carton, tin or any other material which
would be safe to be in contact
with pharmaceutical formulations.
Preferably, the compartment size may vary according to the pouch size and the
number of tablets,
capsules, or the like which need to be administered.
Although a few embodiments have been described, it will be appreciated to
those skilled in the art
that various changes and modifications can be made to the embodiments
described herein. The terms and
expressions used in the above description have been used herein as terms of
description and not of
limitation, and there is no intention in the use of such terms and expressions
of excluding equivalents of the
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features shown and described or portions thereof, it being recognized that the
invention is defined and
limited only by the claims that follow.
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