Improvement of Methadone Maintenance Treatment (MMT) Process Through Development and Implementation of Methadone Dispenser

• Main Authors: Mohd Amran, Nor Amirah, Ab Karim, Mohd Sayuti, Abd Rashid, Rusdi, Tuan Zahari, Tuan Zaharinie, Ishak, Amirul Latif
• Format: Article
• Published: ASTM International 2019
• Subjects: R Medicine; TJ Mechanical engineering and machinery
• Online Access: http://eprints.um.edu.my/23996/; https://doi.org/10.1520/JTE20180094

Methadone is a controlled drug and can be prescribed by an authorized person in charge, under the direction of medical practitioners, for particular patients, to cure their addiction to opioid substances. The development and evaluation of a methadone dispenser present a prototype solution for solving the current manual methadone dispensing problems, which are prone to human error, with the implementation of the methadone maintenance treatment (MMT) program at the same time to increase public awareness about this program. In the current study, the performance of a methadone dispenser is evaluated by investigating the simulation analysis, feasibility, and efficiency of the device as compared to the manual technique. For testing purposes, methadone syrup was replicated with sugar solution of 66.6 g/50 mL at 25°C with a dynamic viscosity of 36.680 mPa.s. Thus, it was quantified that the time taken to dispense the sugar solution by using the methadone dispenser has shown a significant improvement of 81.40 % time reductions as compared to the manual technique. The low repeatability percentage of the methadone dispenser by 1.64 % contributes to a high precision device that is reliable enough to be implemented in the MMT program with a dispensing accuracy increment of 3.87 %, as compared to the manual technique. The findings suggest that the methadone dispenser is reliable and feasible and contributes to error reduction for implementation in the MMT program with approximately ≈ 97 % efficiency. © 2019 by ASTM International.