Slides Three and Four: Conceptual Design

Our design choice for the PATO was the Stack Dispenser design. Here are some points as to why we chose this one over all the others:

Useful features:

• Pill containers would allow some adjustability of dose size (several pills could be in each container)
• Multiple dose types possible (a variety of pills could be placed in different stacks with different lockout times)

Main Advantages

Dimensions:

• Lighter and smaller than both liquid dispensers
• Smaller (better space optimization) than the strip dispenser and rotating pill dispenser

Simplicity:

• Easier to work with solid pills or containers than with strips of material
• Pills are readily available and plastic boxes are easily constructed, but more complex packaging of doses would be required for the strip dispenser

In more detail, the PATO uses the Stack Dispenser design because using pill containers would allow some dose adjustability, which was the major disadvantage of the stack dispenser. In other aspects (dimensions, simplicity, and affordability), the stack dispenser’s advantages were superior to those of the other designs. Overall, the advantages far outweighed the disadvantages of the design.

Dimensions:

The stack dispenser was superior to other designs in size and weight. Relying on rectangular tubes would use space much more efficiently than the rotating dispenser, which could only hold one ring of pills around the center without wasting space. The stack dispenser would weigh much less than the liquid analgesic dispensers once the weight of the analgesic was accounted for because the stack dispenser dispenses pills, whereas liquid dispensers would also have to hold the weight of the solvent. This would also make the liquid dispensers larger than necessary.

Simplicity:

It is much easier to work with solid pills or containers than with strips of material. Also, pills are readily available and plastic boxes are easily constructed, but more complex packaging of doses would be required for the strip dispenser. For these reasons, the strip dispenser was too complicated. The liquid dispensers were also more complex than the stack design. A hand-held pump could be unpredictable and inaccurate. The mechanism required to dispense one dose at a time from a syringe would be more complex than the simple process of releasing one pill. Finally, rotational motion is more complicated than linear motion. Thus the stack dispenser won out overall on simplicity. Simpler designs are cheaper to execute, so affordability is an added bonus.