In 1985, 90C,513 poisonings--328 fatalities--were reported to the American Association of Poison Control Centers. Sixty-four percent involved children under age six. Seventeen percent of 2,015 prescription drug ingestions involved grandparents' drugs. Recent studies have confirmed that many elderly have trouble opening child-proof containers. The objective of this research is to establish the technical merit and feasibility of an improved child-proof medicine container for use by older adults.
Specific aims i nclude (1) identifying the effects of aging on the ability to open available medicine containers (2) identifying abilities that children have and lack for use in container design (3) identifying container design constraints imposed by material and molding equipment characteristics (4) developing three prototype designs (5) fabricating the prototypes (6) testing the prototypes on children (7) testing the prototypes on older adults and (8) analysis and reporting.
