New prescription label talks to the visually impaired

Radio frequency technology allows a device to tell patients what is in their medicine bottles.

NORMAL, Ill. — A talking prescription label to organize the many medications visually impaired patients often need has been developed by En-Vision America located here. The En-Vision system, called ScripTalk, involves the use of a printer in a pharmacy and a handheld reading device for use at home. The reader uses a built-in antenna to pick up information from the “smart” label, and broadcasts the data vocally to the user, according to En-Vision vice president David Raistrick. Since the users of the system are visually impaired, ease of operation is important. “Essentially, the prescription with the smart label is held within an inch of the ScripTalk reader. The data are burst into the reader, which then speaks it out,” Mr. Raistrick explained.

Organizing the many drugs elderly, visually impaired people need is a problem in need of a solution according to physicians.

“Patients are coming in with a bag full of medications, and you really wonder how many are going in and at the right time,” explained Janet Serle, MD, associate professor of ophthalmology at the Mt. Sinai School of Medicine in New York City.

Accessible list needed

An additional step, Dr. Serle continued, would involve a method of putting all the drug names a patient is taking together in an accessible list. “So, instead of picking up each bottle individually, which won’t help if they’ve misplaced a bottle, they could be reminded of all the medications they are taking. This device (the ScripTalk) more or less defines the medicine they happen to have in hand, but it doesn’t remind them of the medicines they’re not holding,” she said.

Mr. Raistrick acknowledged Dr. Serle’s comment and said En-Vision is working on a solution. “A lot of things can be done once you begin putting critical data on a prescription,” he said, “including alerting the patient when they need to take their medicines. Drug compliance is one of many enhancements that will be made to ScripTalk.”

Currently, ScripTalk’s information includes the name of the drug, the dosage, the remaining number of refills, the name and telephone number of the dispensing pharmacy and the names of any contraindicated drugs or substances, such as alcohol. The smart label is about the size of the ancillary warning label often seen on prescription bottles, according to Mr. Raistrick. “A lot of things can be done once you begin putting critical data on a prescription, including alarming the patients when they need to take their medicines. Drug compliance is one of the many enhancements that will be made to ScripTalk,” he said.

The system also has a fail-safe device in case two bottles are held up to it at the same time, Mr. Raistrick added. “If it sees two labels, it will tell the user that only one can be presented at a time,” he said.

When it is available in pharmacies early in 2001, the reader will cost “less than $250, and the smart label printer will cost less than $1,500. So, it’s relatively inexpensive to put the printer into place and offer the service. The other thing to think about from the pharmacist’s side is that any pharmacy that has a printer could also be retailing the reader. We believe the reader will be covered by most major insurance companies and Medicare,” he said.

Older solutions to the problem

Although the ScripTalk system is a high technology answer to the problems the visually impaired have with taking the right medication at the right time, other, quainter methods are often used, according to occupational therapist Cheryl Terpening of the Low Vision and Visual Rehabilitation Services at the University of Michigan Health Sciences Center, Ann Arbor.

Many of the people she helps are suffering from macular degeneration as well as having hearing difficulties. “Some people go with different colors. Others use a 3-by-5 card and a rubber band on the bottle, making the print with a black marker on the bottle in a size large enough for them to read. Sometimes, they use rubber bands and beads, with the beads telling them how many times a day they take that specific medicine,” she explained.

Still other patients keep their medicines separated on different shelves and in different cupboards. “There are a variety of approaches to the problem. If you have someone with slight memory problems, they may not remember an adaptive approach, so a talking label could be a real help.”

A talking label, she continued, would help people who could hear such as those with retinitis pigmentosa. They are often younger than those with macular degeneration and have fewer hearing difficulties.

It could also help those with other vision disorders. “Some of our patients have people come in once a week to put their medicine in weekly containers,” she said.

For Your Information:

• Janet Serle, MD, can be reached at Mt. Sinai Medical School, 1 Gustave L. Levy Place, New York, NY 10029; (212) 241-8979; fax: (212) 289-5945.
• Cheryl Terpening can be reached at Kellogg Eye Center, 1000 Wall St., Ann Arbor, MI 48109; (734) 764-5106; fax: (734) 936-1991.
• David Raistrick, vice president of En-Vision, can be reached at 1013 Porter Lane, Normal, IL 61761; (309) 452-3088; fax: (309) 452-3643.