Medi-Voice

Medi-Voice Project
pera.projectcoordinator.net/~medi-voice

About the project

Medi-Voice is a low cost, environmentally friendly, smart packaging technology to differentiate European SME suppliers to service the needs of the blind, illiterate and Europe’s aging population.

Printed instructions are meaningless to around 20% of the European population. This figure, combined with the 8 million blind and partially sighted people in Europe as well as the ever increasing aging population are contributing to the 194,500 deaths a year in the EU due to miss-dose and non-compliance of prescribed medication. Non-compliance is estimated to cost the European Union 125bn Euro annually, of which 2.25bn Euro is annually paid by Europe’s struggling SME pharmacist community.

Our idea is to take current state-of-the-art compliance monitoring, enhance it and combine it with our speech technology incorporating them into Pharmaceutical blister packaging through novel manufacturing techniques such as in-mould labelling. These technologies will overcome the problems associated with non-compliance and miss-dose, specifically through the incorporation of spoken instructions.

Further more, the primary objective of the project is to develop an eco-friendly power generation system that will harness ‘free’ solar energy through the incorporation of thin film, flexible, photovoltaic laminates, with specific innovation being in the homogenisation of the photovoltaic and the polymer packaging through in-mould labeling techniques.

The speech system and compliance electronics will be developed onto a flexible PCB which will be over-moulded enabling incorporation into the packaging, ensuring that the instructions are never lost from the medication. The spoken instructions will be heard through a piezo-electric sounder that will be encapsulated into the polymer packaging during the injection moulding process. Dosage assurance will be achieved through the printing of conductive ink electrodes onto the blister sealing film that will input to the compliance circuitry. The technical risks are high, but justified by the huge economic, social and environmental benefits, and are addressed through a methodical and structured program of work.

For more information or to view the project's progress, go to pera.projectcoordinator.net/~medi-voice