Design and fabricate neckwear to improve the elderly patients’ medical compliance

Abstract

According to the estimation of the US National Council for Patient Information and Education, there is millions of prescription written each year, but only half of them are correctly followed by patients. Non-compliance with medicine prescription will result in higher medical cost, more hospitalizations, more complicated pill dosage, and even a threat to life. In order to improve elderly people’s medical compliance, a new approach that utilizes microelectronics technology in wearable neckwear has been proposed. The sensors in the neckwear are able to detect whether the user has actually taken the pill and which pills the user has taken. During the design iteration, elderly participants’ medication related behavioral data and their opinions towards the neckwear reminder concept were first gathered by interviews. The result has demonstrated that wearable neckwear seemed to be a potential solution to improve elderly people’s medication compliance. Then a set of physical (non-functional) prototypes was created based on the initial survey input. Usability testing was conducted in order to measure elderly people’s preferences in relation to shape, comfort, desirability, ease of use and other factors. This paper documented the development of this prototype and focused on the design challenges that have been encountered, and how the problems have been solved.