| Summary: | Methadone Maintenance Therapy (MMT) program is one of the "Harm Reduction" programs established for opioid abusers. In MMT program, patients are prescribed with methadone by a medical officer. The preparation of methadone syrup is supervised by authorized pharmacists. Taking an accurate dose at regular time is the key success of the treatment. However, high mobility patients face difficulties to access health facilities for methadone treatment. In addition, limited medical personnel and human error further contribute to poor retention of patients in MMT program. The current methadone prescribing approach requires high operation cost in order to provide treatment in prison and other places. Hence, a more cost-effective method of prescribing methadone to patients with minimum number of health personnel's are really in need. This thesis described the development of an Intelligent Dispensing Machine System Interface (i¬Dispenser) which aims to provide cost effective method of prescribing methadone to MMT patients. This study has two objectives. First, is to integrate the components parts of i-Dispenser into one complete dispensing system. Second, is to provide method of automatic dispensing accurate amount of methadone for the MMT patients. i-Dispenser system was designed, fabricated and analysed, in three phases. In phase one, the appropriate i-Dispenser components and shape were identified and selected. SolidWorks software was used to design the ideal shape and structure of the intelligent dispensing machine. In phase two, user system interface between machine was designed and developed using Microsoft Visual Studio. This phase also concerned with the integration of different subsystems and i-Dispenser components as one large system which involves complex computer algorithm. Subsequently, the system interface and machine structure were assembled and fabricated for testing. Phase three was focus on the accuracy of dispensing process performed by the i-Dispenser. The accuracy of dispensing ability was applied using volumetric flow rate techniques. The final fabricated prototype has shown to be able to dispense the exact amount of methadone with the accepted decimal values ranged from 0.003 - 0.0079 (p-value > 0.05, P = 0.99). The overall operation treatment costs has been reduced to 32.4%. The methods of delivering methadone to patients in MMT programs has been theoretically improve by the development of this machine.
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