Restructuring medical package leaflets to improve knowledge transfer

This document presents a readability test designed to optimise the readability of package leaflets for medicinal products. Patients often find leaflets incomprehensible, which in part explains the high percentage of medications disposed of before being taken. So patient information must be formulated that an averagely educated user can understand its content and follow its instructions. The paper discusses the existing methods and the additional properties that the new readability method offers. A newly developed catalogue of criteria forms the foundation for the new method. In addition, the problems associated with current package leaflets are discussed. A medical thesaurus translate technical terms into their colloquial equivalents. To verify the new method there will be an evaluation with 400 test subjects. The paper shows also shortly the readability project in the context of previous projects of the Knowledge Management and Medical Engineering group (KMME) and how these projects can be combined to improve