Integrating Prescriptions into Calendars: Design Considerations
Optimizing the adherence to medical prescriptions remains an ongoing challenge in our health care systems. Among the many reasons for non-adherence (including socioeconomic status) are forgetfulness and the need to manage dynamically evolving busy lives. Electronic medication reminder apps have become broadly available to aid this situation. However, these apps are rarely integrated with other tools used for managing day to day activities, e.g., general electronic calendars. In this paper, we investigate the design of calendars that can also be used for managing medical prescriptions. The proposed designs include mechanisms for visualizing medication entries and communicating attributes related to medication prescriptions. The designs also include ways of annotating conflicts arising from scheduling of medication entries that violate temporal constraints specified in the prescriptions. A user study was conducted to evaluate the calendar designs. The results indicate potential benefits and considerations for utilizing calendars to manage prescriptions.
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