Chapter 18, Problem 23RQ

One of the 14 NAE Grand Challenges is Engineering Better Medicines. Part of this Grand Challenge is creating individual medication plans for each patient, rather than sweeping recommendations based upon research using only one subset of the population. For example, in the past most heart attack protocols were created for white mates. It has been discovered in recent years that women have different initial symptoms and respond better to a different treatment protocol than their male counterparts.

 To bettor tailor the medicine to the individual, you wish to write a computer program to allow the user to enter several variables. The program will then produce a suggested solution. Write the MATLAB code to:

a.    Ask the user to enter his or her name (text).

b.    Ask the user to type his or her weight (a number) in pounds-force.

c.    Ask the user to select his or her symptom from a menu, given the following choices.

 ■    Cold

 ■    Flu

■    Migraine

d.    Based upon the answer selected to the menu, set the medicine name, volume [mL] and mass [g] of the medicine tablet

e.    Write (a) the function call from the program and (b) a function that will accept the mass and volume of the desired medicine from the main program and return the specific gravity of the desired medicine tablet to the program. Remember: The density of water is 1000 kilograms per cubic meter,

f.    Write (a) the function call from the program and (b) a function that will accept the weight of the person, specific gravity of the medicine, and tablet volume from the main program and return the number of tablets recommended for the person to the program. To determine the number of tablets needed, the following equation should be used and then rounded up to the next whole number of tablets. Any calculations or conversions necessary should appear in the function.

g.    Write an output statement that appears as follows, where N is replaced by the name of the medicine and x.xxx is replaced by the calculated specific gravity formatted to show three decimal places: The specific gravity of N is X.XXX.

h.    Write an output statement that appears as follows, where AAAA is the name of the user, n is the name of the medicine, yyy is the name of their symptom, and Z is the number of tablets recommended

AAAA, your recommended dosage of N to treat a YYY: Z tablets.

 Note

 Although you may use conditional statements to solve this problem, none are needed if you set up the medicine data table as a cell array.