Drug identification and interaction checker based on IoT to minimize adverse drug reactions and improve drug compliance

Drug compliance and adverse drug reactions (ADR) are two of the most important issues regarding patient safety throughout the worldwide healthcare sector. ADR prevalence is 6.7 % throughout hospitals worldwide, with an international death rate of 0.32 % of the total of the patients. This rate is even higher in Ambient Assisted Living environments, where 15 % of the patients suffer clinically significant interactions due to patient non-compliance to drug dosage and schedule of intake in addition to suffering from polypharmacy. These instances increase with age and cause risks of drug interactions, adverse effects, and toxicity. However, with a tight follow-up of the drug treatment, complications of incorrect drug use can be reduced. For that purpose, we propose an innovative system based on the Internet of Things (IoT) for the drug identification and the monitoring of medication. IoT is applied to examine drugs in order to fulfill treatment, to detect harmful side effects of pharmaceutical excipients, allergies, liver/renal contradictions, and harmful side effects during pregnancy. The IoT design acknowledges that the aforementioned problems are worldwide so the solution supports several IoT identification technologies: barcode, Radio Frequency Identification, Near Field Communication, and a new solution developed for low-income countries based on IrDA in collaboration with the World Health Organization. These technologies are integrated in personal devices such as smart-phones, PDAs, PCs, and in our IoT-based personal healthcare device called Movital.