Introduction
Older persons following a prolonged complex drug regimen often make mistakes when taking their medication [1], [2], [3], [4]. These mistakes usually involve confusions in the drugs themselves or their correct dose or else forgetting to take a drug, any of which may sometimes have severe consequences [5]. These patients usually have tricks to help them with the correct use of their medication; for example, using pill boxes, associating a drug with their meals, or making a note on the drug box of the dose and therapeutic indication in order to avoid these omissions or confusions [4], [6], [7].
The growth in the sales of tablet computers and smartphones has favoured the development of applications to help people remember to take their medication [8], [9], [10], [11], [12], [13], [14], [15]. These pill-box like applications can be adapted to the individual preferences, therapeutic regimen, dosage and lifestyle of the patient. They help with the self-medication of drugs regularly taken by independently living patients. An alternative method involves ean-13 (barcodes) and more recently QR (Quick Response codes), which are now also becoming more common in the healthcare setting, though with more applications available for the professional as opposed to the patient [16], [17], with the latter mainly aimed at improving patient safety [18].
We here report on the development and evaluation of an application that transforms medication-associated ean-13 and QR codes into verbal instructions, to enable safer use of medication by the patient.