Patent ID: 7950206

Claim:
A device for dispensing pills, the device comprising: a plurality of pill canisters within the device for dispensing pills, each of the canisters having a machine-readable canister identifier; a reader contained within the device for dispensing pills, the reader adapted to read the machine-readable canister identifier; a means for moving any one of the pill canisters to a target location; a selector interfaced to the plurality of pill canisters, the selector is interfaced to the reader and the selector uses data from the reader to determine which of the plurality of pill canisters is at the target location, the selector controls the means for moving to repeatedly move pill canisters to the target location until the machine-readable canister identifier of the pill canister at the target location as read from the reader matches a desired pill type; a control interfaced to the pill canister at the target location, the control adapted to release a desired quantity of the pills from the pill canister at the target location; a target container positioned beneath the target location, the target container adapted to accept and hold the desired quantity of the pills deposited; wherein the machine-readable canister identifier is an RFID; wherein the RFID includes writeable memory and the writeable memory has a field for storing a current number of the pills in the pill canister at the target location, the reader is adapted to write to the writeable memory and the device for dispensing pills reads the field for storing a current number of the pills before the control releases the desired quantity of the pills from the pill canister then writes an updated number of the pills to the field for storing a current number of the pills after the control releases the desired quantity of the pills from the pill canister at the target location.