Patent Document ID: 9116887
Application ID: 13404766
Patent Status: 1

Claim One:
1. An apparatus for identifying a medicinal substance, the apparatus comprising: a tray that receives and concurrently supports a plurality of individual pills removed from a bulk container, the individual pills being formed at least in part from the medicinal substance that have been removed from the container; a non-transitory computer-readable memory storing a drug database comprising a plurality of drug entries, wherein each drug entry comprises at least one physical property related to an identity of a pill formed at least in part from a different medicinal substance; a recognition system comprising one or more recognition devices that capture an image of a plurality of different surfaces of each of the plurality of individual pills removed from the container while arranged on the tray, wherein the recognition system, from the image, recognizes at least one identifying feature comprising a visible physical property of the individual pills on the tray from both an upward-facing surface of a fist pill resting on the tray and downward-facing surface of a second pill resting on the tray; and a controller that receives a signal indicative of the at least one identifying feature detected by the one or more recognition devices for the first pill and second pill and determines at least one possible identity of the medicinal substance forming the first pill and the second pill from among the different medicinal substances in the drug database based on the at least one identifying feature detected by the one or more recognition devices from the upward-facing surface of the first pill and the downward-facing surface of the second pill.