Paper Title
Health Literacy Innovation: A Survey to Understand the Patient’s Need. The Time is Coming to Adapt the Package Insert Using Digital Technology
Abstract
This study was carried out in collaboration with a patient association, “Patient Focused Medicines Development”(PFMD),that has developed a survey of 18 questions to understand patient perspectives and expectations regarding the drug package insert. It was shared with a large group of responders (1029) from different countries (71% Northern America;25% Europe; 4% others), different age groups and pathologies (chronic / non-chronic).The most represented age group is 60 to 69 years old (26.7%) then 50 to 59 years old (19.2%) and those over 70 years old (18.6%). Of the respondents, 81.9% had a chronic illness. The patient insert is the main and only required documentation for communicating information about the drug use to the patient. The literature mentions the importance of the information provided to the patient to stick to their treatment but also underlined the limitation of this source of information. The result of this study showed among the responders, only 24%of our subjects read the paper version of the package insert exclusively.The objective of this paper is to understand why drug insert paper support is not sufficient to address patient needs, 76% responders read the package leaflet or information available for the medication provided by the company, through websites or other sources (North America 73.1%, Europe 82.1%). In addition, almost half of the subjects do not keep the package insert for future reference or verification because they have access to the information on the internet.
Throughout our study, we also highlighted the difficulties that our subjects faced, such as the lack of lay language, the size of the font, the layout and the amount of information. Some individuals find themselves drowning in information written in medical jargon that they do not always understand. The challenge today lies in designing a leaflet that is adaptable to all and that responds to patients' complaints and needs. In the future, the patient insert will be interactive and digitalized.
Keywords - Digital Labeling, Perception Public, Medicine Information, Medicine Labeling, Health Literacy.