Abstract
iMAT is a system of automatic medication dispensers and software tools. It is for people who take medications on long term basis at home to stay well and independent. The system helps its users to improve rigor in compliance by preventing misunderstanding of medication directions and making medication schedules more tolerant to tardiness and negligence. A user of iMAT medication dispenser and schedule manager has no need to understand the directions of her/his medications. iMAT enables the pharmacist of each user to extract a machine readable medication schedule specification (MSS) from the user’s prescriptions and OTC directions. Once loaded into an iMAT dispenser or schedule manager, the tool automatically generates a medication schedule that meets all the constraints specified by the user’s MSS. Based on the schedule, the tool reminds the user at the times when some doses should be taken and provides instructions on how the doses should be taken (e.g., with 8 oz of water, no food within 30 minutes, etc.) In this way, iMAT helps to make complex regimens easy to follow. We also present two families of heuristic algorithms for scheduling medications that interact with each other. All algorithms accept as input machine readable medication directions that specify the dose size and timing constraints to be met by all schedules. Simulation results on their performance in terms of success rate and schedule quality can help builders of smart medication dispensers and scheduling tools choose among algorithms and tradeoff merits along different dimensions.