Rabat – Five Moroccan engineering students have developed an automated medication dispenser called PillPal to reduce dispel medication errors such as taking the wrong medications or improper dosage or even skipping meds.
Loubna El Attar, one of PillPal developers and an Artificial Intelligence and Computer Engineering student at ENSAM Casablanca, told Morocco World News that the robot is “endowed with IoT technology and an ergonomic graphic interface, that offers a secure and straightforward way to manage medication.”
Inspired by their daily discussions, the first-year engineering students developed PillPal around five months ago for an annual electronic competition at ENSAM Casablanca.
The group discussions included Industrial Engineering students Amina Kalyati and Aya Beriane, as well as Artificial Intelligence and Computer Engineering student Mohammed Sghiouri. Along with the first-year engineering students, there is Youssef Tairi who is in his first year of the preparatory cycle at the same school.
The PillPal team
Driven by the urgency of further pursuing their curiosity while working on the school project, the teammates realized their passion for developing projects that can address social needs.
Pillpall, for instance, helps the user focuses “on what matters most in life, removing the stress and tension of worrying about managing pills or nagging over them,” El Attar told MWN. “It also assists physicians to keep track of medical records.”
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With the hope of officially launching the product in the Moroccan and global market, the students participated in the Startech Africa competition along with 300 participants from 15 African countries.
Organized by ENSAM and French IT company Capgemini, the competition recorded the participation of more than 800 African innovative projects.
Pillpall prototype
The PillPal team successfully completed the competition by finishing in the third position — behind a gas sensor project by Yemeni Ph.D. student Bassam Badr Al Nahari and a Tunisian drone, developed by engineering student Jaraay Abdesslem, to help secure palm tree pollination.
The first two inventions received patents, while the third-placed team of Moroccan freshman engineering students took from their honorable ranking a sense of purpose and urgency to make their current project better and work on other impact-driven projects in the future.
“The competition has been truly challenging, and it was an honor to represent Morocco and to win the third prize in Africa, we believe that this opportunity will give us purpose and zeal to improve PillPal,” El Attar said of their participation in the continental contest.
With an award in the bag, the Pillpal team is working on another project called EducPal. It is a robot controlled by a website application.
While details on the invention are yet to be disclosed, El Attar told MWN that the robot “will assist both teachers and students [to] effectively address the problems encountered in the educational system in our country.”
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