Elderly patients are the largest consumers of prescription and non-prescription medications and have been reported to account for $887 million in treatment costs for medication errors likely due to altered pharmacokinetics, polypharmacy, decline in cognition, and lower health literacy. As a result of this confluence of issues that affect the aging population, medication management tools designed to accommodate the particular needs of older adults can be greatly beneficial. While there have been many advances made in mobile health technologies to assist with aspects of medication management such as adherence reminders and access to drug labeling information, few products are designed to enable facile identification and verification of a patient's prescribed medications. The innovation proposed in this Phase I SBIR addresses this gap in medication management tools designed for older adult patients. We will use a combination of innovative mechanical and software engineering techniques to build the Scriptmate system, which will be designed to assist older adult patients with easy identification and verification of medications using a pill scanner and facilitate medication consolidation, and access to medication information via patient-facing mobile application. The goal of this Phase I SBIR is to assess the feasibility and usability of Scriptmate. Three substudies will be conducted with older adult patients and pharmacists using a user-centered design framework to address the project goal: a formative assessment (N=20), prototype walkthrough interviews (N=10) and one-on-one usability testing sessions (N=10).
Patient misunderstanding of prescription medication label instructions has been found to be one of the main root causes of medication errors that can lead to ADEs. While this is an issue that affects patients of all ages, older adult patients with multiple morbidities and complex medication regimens are at greatest risk. Our proposed system, Scriptmate, uses a combination of mechanical and software engineering to directly address a gap in medication management innovations today, allowing older adults to easily identify and verify medications and consolidate medications on a schedule based on key health literacy principles. Results of this project will have implications for the care of aging adults with increasingly complex medication regimens, and potentially for other sub-populations with reduced physical and cognitive abilities.
