PATIENT COMPLIANCE - PharmXpert Academy

Drug Delivery, Drug Packaging, Labelling & Dispensingthe product’s safety and efficacy throughout the stated shelflife, as well as the need to produce, fill and distribute the drugefficiently. User considerations and abilities generally play asecondary role in terms of importance.We believe a more user-centred design (UCD) approach isneeded. This shift is already beginning, and will likely grow,as the result of:• the costs associated with non-compliance,• global population aging,• changes in the social construct through which we viewdisability,• the need for product differentiation in an increasinglycompetitive marketplace, and• the social dimension of the sustainability movement.A Comprehensive Interaction FrameworkClearly, the interaction that occurs between people (i.e.,users: patients and healthcare professionals) and healthcareproducts is an area in need of study. To provide a frameworkfor creating and evaluating how products perform in thehands of patients and healthcare professionals, we haveadapted and combined commonly accepted models from thefields of cognitive psychology and human factors; HumanProcessor Model15 and Usability Theory. 16The Human Processor Model is a simplified representationof the human mind. It postulates that, in order to processinformation and then act upon it, humans employ threesystems:a) The perceptual system: which handles sensory stimulusfrom the outside world (i.e., the five senses).b) The motor system: which controls actions.c) The cognitive system: which supplies the processing toconnect the perceptual system (input) and motor system(output).The interaction between an object (e.g., warning, label,package, etc.) and a person can be described as a cyclicinformation flow17 consisting of five stages (see Table 1):1. Exposure: the user is exposed to necessary information.Information may be in the form of the pack, features,labelling, or other components of interest.2. Perception: information is input into one or more of thefive senses.3. Encodation: the external information gathered throughperception is transformed into an internal representation.This may be associated with perceived affordances storedin the long term memory (e.g., information from othersources, previous experiences, etc.). Perceived affordancesprovide cues about the operation of things. They referto the object’s characteristics that are perceived by theirusers regarding their potential use. 18 Form, colour, texture,material, and weight of a package incite certain user’sactions.4. Comprehension: the user recognises and assigns meaningto the encoded information, thinks about the effects ofusing the package features, and compares the effect ofthe action with the user’s goals (intentions). Goals maycondition recognition and vice versa.5. Execution: thought is then translated into actions byactivating voluntary muscles. In the case of packagingmanipulations, the most important effectors are the armhand-fingerand the head-eye systems. User’s actions,or reactions, may be instrumental or non-instrumental.Instrumental reactions include the use of a packagingfeature to accomplish a goal (e.g., opening). Noninstrumentalactions include things like touching a surface,etc. The user’s actions may cause a new state of things (e.g.,opening accomplished, now dispensing must occur) andthe cycle repeats until the user’s goals are accomplished.According to Usability Theory, there are four principalcomponents in a “human-machine” system, namely: user, task,tool, and environment; 16 in our argument the “tool” is representedby the design of the packaged product. Since human-packageinteractions can be described by means of information flow,it can be inferred that success or failure at each step of theHuman Processor Model (see Table 1) is dependent on the fourcomponents of Usability Theory (see Figure 1)Table 1 – The five stages of human-package interactionsFigure 1: The four components affecting the five stages ofhuman-package interactions. Adapted from Shackel 161. The user: the characteristics of the person, includingperceptual, cognitive, and physical capabilities, beliefs,habits, previous experience, etc.2. The task: the series of actions and goals to be accomplished,such as identifying, following instructions and directions,opening, dosing, reclosing, storing, disposing, etc.3. The pack: the object of the interaction; the design of thepackage and product.4. The context: the physical and social environment in whichthe interaction takes place. This includes characteristicslike lighting, seating, distractions, temperature, pressures,other people, etc.www.JforPC.comJournal For Patient Compliance Strategies to enhance Adherence and Health Outcomes 49