Hi, learn more about our project!
Problem Statement
According to the FDA, over 1.3 million people in the United States are injured each year due to medication errors such as taking wrong prescription and expired drugs. This can lead to several events that may take toll on their health. Patients with vision impairment are especially vulnerable to medication errors.
Proposed Solution
We want to design a mobile app that can support visually impaired people in identifying and managing their medication. Other than that, we also want to help them take their medicine on time to optimize the efficiency of the drugs. We hope that we could bring a change to the healthcare and quality of lifestyle of these group of people.
Impact
Medication error cause 1 out of 131 outpatient and 1 out of 854 inpatient deaths. According to a research in Saudi Arabia, more than 200 000 of their population is visually impaired and it is reported 21% of them received medications alone and 22% are exposed to medication error. Some of the patients experienced Adverse Drug Reaction (ADR) that can cause mortality and morbidity. This number can keep on increasing if we do not pay much attention for it.
Existing Solutions
Braille Prints/Stickers
Braille is used in pharmaceutical industry in the form of printings or stickers on the packaging. This is a passive solution and is the most cheapest and simplest solution. The downside is the information that can be included is very limited.
ScriptTalk Station
ScriptTalk station is a device that is used to identify and reads prescription information of medicines. The device uses a reader to scan labels that are put on the medicines pacakaging.
ScriptTalk Mobile
ScriptTalk mobile is an app that utilises the phone's camera to scan the same labels that are used by the ScriptTalk station. The app provides information that can be read in large print or by a screen reader.
User Requirements
Medication error is a failure in the treatment process that leads to or has potential to cause harm for the patient. According to World Health Organization (WHO), it is estimated that out of 285 million people 39 million are blind.
What are the challenges the patients faced while handling medications ?
A study was conducted to identify the challenges faced by the visually impaired population during medication management. With the 100 visually impaired respondents, the findings are as follow:
- 89% of respondents were unable to read the prescription labels.
- 75% of respondents did not know the expiry date of their own medication.
- 58% of respondents did not know the name of the medication.
How do visually impaired people used their smartphones ?
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1. Screen reader
- Text to speech feature
2. Voice dictation
- Speech to text feature
What accessibility features they often use ?
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1. Large font sizes
2. Speech output
3. High contrast color combinations
Our Proposed Solution
To solve our user challenges and meet their requirements, we decided to build an assistive mobile application. The main features of our mobile app would be the following:
1. Medication recognition via NFC tags
- Identify medication and provide necessary information
2. Store medication information
- Essential information such as name, prescription and expiry date of the medication.