Personalized medication management: towards a design of individualized support for elderly citizens at home

Several technologies have been developed to support people's medication management, including pillboxes, specialized software applications, reminders and paper-based medication lists. Several of these technologies were discovered in older adults' homes during user studies carried out with the main purpose to help them to manage their medications and recall challenges. We confirm that a considerable number of older adults integrate their medication treatments into their daily life routines, and that the lack of knowledge, caregiver's support, medicine outside the home, forgetting medication intake, complexity of medication regimen were equally important challenges. One of the major findings was the issue related to substitutions, as older adults get confused due to the volatile information that they receive regarding their medications. We define basic requirements in order to address these issues towards the design of a personalized medication management system. We further describe our initial stage in a participatory design process as part of the ongoing Lev Vel Consortium