Electronic Medication Reminder for Older Adults

As the numbers of the elderly people is increasing rapidly, it is important and urgent to design appropriate products for older adults. Because of physical and mental function decline, the elderly need to take multiple drugs, they often occurring medication non-compliance behavior, seriously affecting the health of the elderly. Forget to take medicine is one the most frequency problem, so there were several products designed for reminder, such as electronic pillbox. In recent years, with the development of smart phone, some software was also designed for medication reminder. For the lifestyle and electronic products using experience, not all of the elderly use cell phone in Taiwan, and they do not operate any other function except making a phone call. To discusses whether the software suitable to the elderly was the purpose of this study. This is an exploratory study about electronic medication reminder in Taiwan, there were total 30 volunteers join the project, included 15 older adults; through interviews and a questionnaire survey with the elderly, try to gather difficulties and needs from the elderly when using an electronic medication reminder. The results showed correlations between the interface-complexity and preference of older adults; they would rather choose electronic pillbox than smart phone because it is easier setting and more “approachable”. Through the study results, hope the findings will help clarify the direction of further research and to develop more suitable for the elderly on the operating trends. Keyword: Older Adults, Medication Compliance, Pillbox, Electronic Medication Reminder