Conceptualizing

Before we begin to design anything, we need to brainstorm three conceptually different conceptual designs for a patient-controlled oral analgesic device. During Thursday's recitation, we came up with two viable concepts. One was a Pez-dispenser-like assembly line pill dispenser that could possibly function like a stapler (when you staple something, all the staples move down; similarly, all the pills would moved own in our device). The second was a liquid analgesic dispenser along the lines of a liquid hand soap dispenser. The main issue to be solved for both of these designs is security - how can one lock a patient out of using a soap dispenser? We need to design some mechanism to control the dispensation of analgesics in for both types of device.

We still need to come up with a third design concept. This should occur early next week. On Thursday, we cycled through several ideas only to dismiss them one by one. The one that generated the most conversation was the idea of making analgesics like Listerine strips, which would certainly look pretty cool.

Cheer up and check out some PEZ:
http://www.pez.com/v/default1.htm