# 024 — Dose Clock

## Problem situation
Patients on multiple medications — especially the elderly on 5+ drugs — take pills at scheduled times but have no visibility into what's simultaneously active in their body at any given hour. Pill organizers show *when* to take. Drug interaction checkers give binary yes/no answers. Nothing shows the temporal overlap of active drug concentrations across a 24-hour cycle.

The problem is invisible stacking: two sedating drugs with different half-lives may both be at high concentration at 10pm. A morning dose of a long-half-life drug is still active when the evening dose of something else kicks in. The gap between "when you took it" and "when it's active" is completely hidden.

## What was built
A 24-hour radial clock where each medication occupies a concentric band. Concentration arcs rise from dose time, peak, and decay according to a one-compartment pharmacokinetic model. The radial form makes the cyclic nature of daily dosing visible — drugs that wrap past midnight are immediately apparent.

An inner overlap ring glows amber-to-rust where 2+ drugs are simultaneously active, revealing the daily danger windows. Hovering any hour on the clock reads out active drugs and their relative concentrations. The reading panel shows overlap severity and identifies the peak overlap hour.

Three presets demonstrate different medication profiles: elderly polypharmacy (5 drugs, peak overlap at 11:30pm), morning/evening split (3 drugs with dramatically different half-lives), and pain + sleep overlap (4 drugs, dangerous stacking at bedtime).

## Why this form
Daily medication schedules are inherently cyclic — the 24-hour rhythm IS the problem's shape. A radial clock is the native form for seeing how drug presence wraps around the day. Linear time-series would work but would obscure the cyclic nature and make midnight wraparound awkward. The concentric bands make individual drug behavior readable while the overlap ring compresses the multi-drug interaction into one scannable signal.

## What is actually interesting here
The artifact makes the temporal dimension of drug interaction visible. Existing tools answer "do these drugs interact?" (binary) but not "WHEN during the day do they overlap at high concentration?" The radial form reveals patterns that are invisible in any list: a long-half-life drug (amlodipine, t1/2 40h) forms a nearly complete ring while a short-half-life drug (omeprazole, t1/2 1h) is barely a sliver — the visual contrast makes pharmacokinetic differences immediately legible.

## Iterations
None. The first version captured the core move cleanly.

## Next step
Add a "drag to reschedule" interaction so patients/pharmacists can see how moving a dose time shifts the overlap pattern — would make the instrument actionable, not just diagnostic.

## Art direction note
Dark editorial direction. Canvas-rendered radial clock with restrained color — each drug gets a distinct hue, overlap ring uses warm amber-to-rust. Geist for interface text, JetBrains Mono for labels and data. Generous negative space. Minimal chrome.

## Promotion candidate read
Maybe. The form is native to the problem and the insight (temporal drug overlap) is genuine. But the pharmacokinetic model is simplified and the instrument is currently read-only. Needs dose-rescheduling interaction and real drug database to graduate from educational to useful.
