CA2568141A1 - Unit dose liquid dispenser - Google Patents

Unit dose liquid dispenser Download PDF

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Publication number
CA2568141A1
CA2568141A1 CA002568141A CA2568141A CA2568141A1 CA 2568141 A1 CA2568141 A1 CA 2568141A1 CA 002568141 A CA002568141 A CA 002568141A CA 2568141 A CA2568141 A CA 2568141A CA 2568141 A1 CA2568141 A1 CA 2568141A1
Authority
CA
Canada
Prior art keywords
push
button
dose
bottle
pump
Prior art date
Legal status (The legal status is an assumption and is not a legal conclusion. Google has not performed a legal analysis and makes no representation as to the accuracy of the status listed.)
Abandoned
Application number
CA002568141A
Other languages
French (fr)
Inventor
Atabakhsh Rahim
Current Assignee (The listed assignees may be inaccurate. Google has not performed a legal analysis and makes no representation or warranty as to the accuracy of the list.)
Individual
Original Assignee
Individual
Priority date (The priority date is an assumption and is not a legal conclusion. Google has not performed a legal analysis and makes no representation as to the accuracy of the date listed.)
Filing date
Publication date
Application filed by Individual filed Critical Individual
Priority to CA002568141A priority Critical patent/CA2568141A1/en
Publication of CA2568141A1 publication Critical patent/CA2568141A1/en
Abandoned legal-status Critical Current

Links

Classifications

    • GPHYSICS
    • G06COMPUTING; CALCULATING OR COUNTING
    • G06MCOUNTING MECHANISMS; COUNTING OF OBJECTS NOT OTHERWISE PROVIDED FOR
    • G06M1/00Design features of general application
    • G06M1/22Design features of general application for visual indication of the result of count on counting mechanisms, e.g. by window with magnifying lens
    • BPERFORMING OPERATIONS; TRANSPORTING
    • B05SPRAYING OR ATOMISING IN GENERAL; APPLYING FLUENT MATERIALS TO SURFACES, IN GENERAL
    • B05BSPRAYING APPARATUS; ATOMISING APPARATUS; NOZZLES
    • B05B11/00Single-unit hand-held apparatus in which flow of contents is produced by the muscular force of the operator at the moment of use
    • B05B11/01Single-unit hand-held apparatus in which flow of contents is produced by the muscular force of the operator at the moment of use characterised by the means producing the flow
    • B05B11/10Pump arrangements for transferring the contents from the container to a pump chamber by a sucking effect and forcing the contents out through the dispensing nozzle
    • B05B11/1042Components or details
    • B05B11/108Means for counting the number of dispensing strokes
    • GPHYSICS
    • G06COMPUTING; CALCULATING OR COUNTING
    • G06MCOUNTING MECHANISMS; COUNTING OF OBJECTS NOT OTHERWISE PROVIDED FOR
    • G06M3/00Counters with additional facilities
    • BPERFORMING OPERATIONS; TRANSPORTING
    • B05SPRAYING OR ATOMISING IN GENERAL; APPLYING FLUENT MATERIALS TO SURFACES, IN GENERAL
    • B05BSPRAYING APPARATUS; ATOMISING APPARATUS; NOZZLES
    • B05B11/00Single-unit hand-held apparatus in which flow of contents is produced by the muscular force of the operator at the moment of use
    • B05B11/01Single-unit hand-held apparatus in which flow of contents is produced by the muscular force of the operator at the moment of use characterised by the means producing the flow
    • B05B11/10Pump arrangements for transferring the contents from the container to a pump chamber by a sucking effect and forcing the contents out through the dispensing nozzle
    • B05B11/1042Components or details
    • B05B11/1059Means for locking a pump or its actuation means in a fixed position

Abstract

This invention provides an assembly of a modified cap capable of being fitted on the standard liquid containers for storing and dispensing a unit dose amount of a liquid medicine.
The invention is intended to promote patient compliance with a desired medication regimen.

Description

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

Patient compliance with desired medication regimen has been recognized as a major problem in treating illnesses. For the adult patients, drugs are mostly given as pills and the dosage is easily controlled. In this case, except for intentional drug overdose, simply forgetting is often cited as the primary reason for noncompliance. For the children the issue of noncompliance is associated with bigger challenges. Children are more vulnerable to diseases and, as a result of the larger amount of drug consumption and body immaturity, can be harmed by the drug toxicity and non-effectiveness associated with the failure to follow the drug regimen accurately and in timely manner.
Most preschool-age children receive the medications in a suspension.
Typically, a physician gives a prescription, providing the pharmacist with information regarding the strength and dosage of a specified drug and the interval between doses. This information is usually repeated by the pharmacist on a label attached to the medication package. The actual administration of the drug is left to the sole control of the caregiver, who is supposed to respect the frequency of drug administration and meter the administration in agreement with the prescription. Over the past decade it has become increasingly evident that a significant percentage of caregivers fail to follow the schedule and measure the dose precisely.
Packaging devices have been developed to aid the patient in taking the prescribed dosage. But, from the fact that medication non-compliance is still persisting, it is evident that to date the inventive art has not adequately met the challenge. One reason is the tendency of inventors to develop complex devices that offer far more features and controls than the vast majority of patients require. The costs associated with such devices are also prohibitive and render their widespread usage unfeasible. We believe that making medication-taking easier will encourage compliance. Therefore, we have invented a modified cap for dispensing liquid medicine which functions in a manner similar to the established method of using syringes for metering. However, it prevents the potential contamination of the medicine by frequently introducing a potentially non-sterile syringe into the bottle. Moreover, the invention provides supplementary information thereby assisting caregivers in accurately following a medication regime by easily keeping the track of when and if medication has been administrated. Therefore, the combination of the modified cap and a standard bottle can be used as a unit dose container for administrating the liquid medicine.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
The main object of the present invention is to provide an affordable modified cap to be fitted on the standard bottles with the purpose of dispensing an accurate dose of medication by pushing a button. In order to promote the compliance with the medication regimen, the unit is provided with the following features:

a. Dose-counter and an accompanying dose-indicator, which count and display the number of times that the medicine has been dispensed during a day.

b. Day-counter and accompanying day-indicator, which count and display the number of days over which the medicine has been administrated. Alternatively, the assembly indicates the day of week in which the medicine is being administrated.
c. Child Safety lock, which ensures that children do not get access to the medicine and keeps the unit in a locked position between consecutive dispenses.

d. Dose control, although the modified cap will discharge a specified amount of liquid every time the push button is pushed down completely, if the caregiver's finger slips while pushing, the push-button will be locked. By further pressing the push-button, the rest of the dose will be discharged. This feature enables administrating the medicine in steps.

e. Mouth-piece for direct feeding, this feature enables directly feeding the dispensed medicine.
f. Enhanced sterility of the bottle content.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWING
FIG. 1 is the schematics of the modified cap screwed on a bottle with treaded neck, FIG. 2 is the detailed schematics of the modified cap, FIG. 3 Section N-N of Fig. 2, is the detailed schematics of the day and dose counters, FIG. 4 Section F-F of FIG. 2, is the top view of the gear unit, FIG. 5 Section A-A of FIG. 2, is the side view of the modified cap, FIG. 6 Section I-I of FIG. 5, is the top view of the gear, FIG. 7 detailed view of push-button with locking system.
DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION
The embodiment according to FIG. 1 presents the modified cap screwed on the treaded neck of bottle 1, inside which liquid medicine can be stored. The cap is supplied with one of the prior art child safety mechanism such that children can not easily separate it from the bottle. The modified cap consists of mouth-piece, 34, pump unit, 3, the push-button, 4, and the body, 2, which includes display windows and openings for setting the liquid dispenser. After filling the bottle with a liquid medicine, the pharmacist will screw the modified cap on the bottle, set the dose-selector, and initialize the dose-counter and the day-counter. The dose-selector is set by placing a pointed object in a small hole on the dose-selector, 23, and sliding it to one of the two possible positions. In our preferred embodiment, the two positions correspond to three or four daily doses. It is obvious that caps with other selections can be manufactured and used when the need arises. The dose-counter is initialized by positioning the gear 24 using a pointed object. The initial state of the dose-counter is determined by the time of the day at which the filling is taking place. For example, if the filling is occurring in the evening, after which only one dose (in a three times per day regimen) must be administrated, the gear will be positioned so that the dose-counter will display "2".
In order to dispense the medicine, first the caregiver ensures that the dose has not been already administrated and he/she is not at the end of the medication regimen by looking at the dose-counter indicator, 22, and day-counter indicator, 21. Next, he/she must bring the mouth-piece, 34, to the feeding-position, which, in our preferred embodiment, is vertical to the axis of the cap. Then, the push-button, 4, is unlocked by pushing it down slightly and turning it, in a direction indicated by an arrow on the cap, to the safety-release position. After this action the push-button will automatically move up to its full length. By pressing the push-button to its full stroke, one dose of medicine will be discharged from the end of the mouth-piece, 34, and the push-button will automatically go in the locked position.
The feeding can be done by directly placing the mouth-piece into the mouth of the patient.
Alternatively, the discharged medicine can be collected in an optional reservoir, like a spoon, and subsequently is fed to the patient. At the end of the administration operation the mouth-piece should be cleaned and placed back into its resting position. At this position, the mouth-piece is located in a specially designed cavity on the body of the modified cap in order to avoid contact with external objects. It is obvious that there will be an amount of residual medicine left inside the mouth-piece after dispensing process. The mouth-piece is designed such that this amount is minimized in order to improve the cleaning at the end of the administration.
FIG. 2, schematically, presents the modified cap in more details. By pressing down the pushbutton, 4, the shaft 20 and piston 31 will move down causing rotations in gear units 21, 22 and 25 in one sense without being able to rotate back. Moving down the piston 31 will actuate the pump unit 3 (the detail of the pump is not shown in the design) resulting in pumping the liquid up through pipe 32 and dispensing out through mouth-piece, 34. The section 33 of the tube extending from the inlet of the pump into the bottom of the bottle is made in the form of a hose, to enable easy fitting the dispenser assembly to a variety of bottles with different heights.
Figs. 3 through 6 are presenting the details of the mechanisms responsible for the setting and motion of the dose-selector, dose-counter and day-counter. As it is observed in Fig.
5, inside the section 2 of the modified cap, there is a rail guide, 26, which guides the gear wheel 25.
The details of the mechanical relationship between the gear wheel, 25, and the rail guide, 26, are shown in figure 6. By pushing down the push-button, 4, the gear wheel, is pushed down, as well. The rail guide, 26, forces the gear wheel to rotate and cause the rotation of the shaft, 20. Rotation of the shaft, 20, rotates the day-counter, 21, and the dose-counter, 22, of figure 3. On the body of the dose-counter, 22, of figure 3, there are two rows of numbers repeating from 1 to 3 (lower row) or 1 to 4 (upper row). Based on the dosage frequency required by the prescription, the pharmacist will displace the dose-selector, 23.
Accordingly, one of the two discs of the dose-counter will be engaged to the gear change, 24, and then through the windows of the dose-display, 22, of the figure 1, one of the two different dose regiments will be indicated. Often, the pharmacist needs to initialize the pump by pushing the push-button down a few times to be sure that the air inside the pump is evacuated. After this process, the dose-counter and the day-counter need to be adjusted by rotating pins 21a and 22a using a pointed object, like tip of a pen. Sometimes, children refuse a dose (for example by spitting) and a second dosage needs to be given immediately. In this case, the caregiver should return the dose-counter one step back by rotating the pin 22a using a pointed object. Both pins, 21a and 22a, are designed to be not easily accessible to avoid unnecessary setting of the modified cap resulting in noncompliance.

Figure 4 presents the actuation of the day-counter caused by rotation of shaft 20. Depending on which of the two states of the dose regimen is selected, by the dose-selector 23, the gear change, 24, will engage one of the two gears 28 and 29 to the gear 27. Gear 28 has four teeth while gear 29 has three teeth. Accordingly, depending on the dose selection, at the end of four or three times of dispensing per day the gear 27 will rotate by one step. One step rotation of gear 27 will increase the reading of the day-counter display by one unit. In one embodiment, on the disc 21 the numbers 1 to N
have been printed, where N is the number of the days over which the medicine should be administered.
In our preferred embodiment, a sequence of seven letters or words, representing the days of weeks, has been printed twice on the disc 21. This manner, a correlation is provided between "dispense days" and "real days".
The locking mechanism is shown in figure 7. The slip 41 has a tooth that is engaged to the one way gear 42 in such a way that the push-button cannot move up before it is pushed down completely. This mechanism is implemented for three different purposes. Since most of children resist in drinking medicine, in the case of feeding through the mouth-piece, the caregiver can dispense the liquid in steps and do not need to dispense the whole dose at once. Also, in the case that the caregiver's finger slips while pushing down the push-button, the locking mechanism will act as a brake and prevent the return of the push button due to the action of the spring in the pump. Then, the caregiver, by further pushing the push-button, can dispense the rest of the dose. After the push-button is pushed to the full extent, the tooth on the slip will reach to the lower part of the rail guide, 43, and will be locked. For dispensing the next dose, the care giver must slightly push down and then rotate the push-button, in a sense indicated by a sign like arrow, to have the tooth of the slip in the vertical part of the rail guide, 43. In this case the force of the pump spring will push up the push-button resulting in the refilling of the pump with liquid.

Claims

What is claimed is:
1. A modified cap to be fitted on a bottle for storing and delivering a liquid medicine in a unit dose manner, the cap comprising:

a. a substantially cylindrical body, which when fitted on said bottle is oriented substantially parallel with an axis of said bottle, b. a push-button housed at the distal end of said body, said push-button being capable of being actuated axially down in steps, c. a locking mechanism to prevent said push-button from returning back when said push-button has not been fully actuated over its travel distance, said locking mechanism being releasable when said push-button has been fully actuated over its travel distance, d. a pump housed within said body, where said pump is actuated by the said pushbutton and dispenses a predetermined unit dose when said push-button is fully actuated, e. a mouth-piece through which said unit dose of liquid medicine is dispensed by said pump, said mouth-piece detachably oriented relative to said cylindrical body in a substantially orthogonal direction relative to said axis of said bottle, f. a housing for supporting said mouth-piece on said body, g. a dose-counting means and its accompanying indicator, settable to different states, which counts the number of the complete actuations of said pump cyclically from one up to a maximum number and indicating the resulting count through an aperture in said body, h. a day-counting means and its accompanying indicator, settable to different states, which indicates through a second aperture in said body the day during which the dispensing is performed, whereby a fixed number of doses are given per day.
CA002568141A 2006-11-06 2006-11-06 Unit dose liquid dispenser Abandoned CA2568141A1 (en)

Priority Applications (1)

Application Number Priority Date Filing Date Title
CA002568141A CA2568141A1 (en) 2006-11-06 2006-11-06 Unit dose liquid dispenser

Applications Claiming Priority (1)

Application Number Priority Date Filing Date Title
CA002568141A CA2568141A1 (en) 2006-11-06 2006-11-06 Unit dose liquid dispenser

Publications (1)

Publication Number Publication Date
CA2568141A1 true CA2568141A1 (en) 2008-05-06

Family

ID=39367186

Family Applications (1)

Application Number Title Priority Date Filing Date
CA002568141A Abandoned CA2568141A1 (en) 2006-11-06 2006-11-06 Unit dose liquid dispenser

Country Status (1)

Country Link
CA (1) CA2568141A1 (en)

Cited By (3)

* Cited by examiner, † Cited by third party
Publication number Priority date Publication date Assignee Title
CN102821867A (en) * 2010-04-05 2012-12-12 瓦格纳喷涂技术有限公司 Fluid level indicator in an airless fluid sprayer
US9604236B2 (en) 2010-04-05 2017-03-28 Jeffrey E. Sandahl Fluid intake assembly for a fluid sprayer
CN112384186A (en) * 2018-05-25 2021-02-19 英格玛·韦拉赫 Metering device

Cited By (5)

* Cited by examiner, † Cited by third party
Publication number Priority date Publication date Assignee Title
CN102821867A (en) * 2010-04-05 2012-12-12 瓦格纳喷涂技术有限公司 Fluid level indicator in an airless fluid sprayer
US9038923B2 (en) 2010-04-05 2015-05-26 Wagner Spray Tech Corporation Fluid level indicator in an airless fluid sprayer
CN102821867B (en) * 2010-04-05 2016-03-02 瓦格纳喷涂技术有限公司 Without the fluid levels indicator in air fluid injector
US9604236B2 (en) 2010-04-05 2017-03-28 Jeffrey E. Sandahl Fluid intake assembly for a fluid sprayer
CN112384186A (en) * 2018-05-25 2021-02-19 英格玛·韦拉赫 Metering device

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Legal Events

Date Code Title Description
FZDE Discontinued