A study of Chinese typographic cues on prescribed medicine labelling for the elderly

Abstract

The ageing population is growing drastically and has become a global issue in the 21st century. Faced with the challenges posed by the growing aging population, the World Health Organization (WHO, 2007) advocated the concept of the “age-friendly city,” which aims to provide accessible and comprehensible facilities and social services to the elderly. However, the WHO states that one of the common challenges of communicating with older people is the visual presentation of information. It explicitly suggests that the font size on medicine labels is too small for the elderly to read. In addition, too much information is contained in a small space, making it difficult to decipher. Studies (Frascara, 2015; Waarde, 2006; Sless, 1994) indicate that illegible medicine labels are a key factor in medication errors, particularly among the elderly. The aim of this project is to assess the current design of Hospital Authority medicine labels and explore the correlations between older people’s practice of looking for medical information and visual typographic cues. By conducting home visits, usability tests, comprehension test, and focus groups with older people, this research project endeavours to examine a series of visual typographic cues that may improve the legibility and accessibility of Hospital Authority medicine labels to develop an age-friendly medicine label for older people.