Senior Capstone

What is a pill crusher?

Many nursing home and hospital patients find their medicinal regimens to be cumbersome and difficult. It is not uncommon for these patients to find taking their medicine painful or impossible.

As a means to avoid these issues, pill crushers are used to reduce medication to a fine powder that can be administered in daily meals or drinks.

Our quest

There are a wide library of pill crushers on the market today, but the market has many opportunities for improvement. A small facility like a nursing home in Orono may not be able to afford a sophisticated pill crusher that alleviates operator strain. As consequence, nurses sometimes have to use a cheaper pill crusher that is physically taxing. Many nurses report wrist and arm injuries they received while using these crushers.

Larger organizations like hospitals can afford the more expensive, less physically taxing pill crushers, but these models are not without their own issues. Larger, more expensive pill crushers can be loud and disruptive.

The goal of the MET class of 2011 is to design and develop a pill crusher that is cheaper than its competition, requires little strain operate, and is effective at crushing multiple pills at once.