Aging & Society: Eighth Interdisciplinary Conference

Abstract

The demand for health care products has increased in the modern and aged society. More than half of chronic patients need to take more than four to six different kinds of medication each day, especially prescription drugs. Therefore, how to distinguish the right drugs has become a big issue for patients. At present, the appearance of pills is still highly dependent on the shape and color to identify, in which the color of the pills served as the easiest feature to distinguish the differences from each other. In addition, color can also effectively disseminate a function or effect of associated messages that relieves patients’ confusion and uneasy emotions. In this study, the researcher starts from the collation of related literature such as color perception, functional association color, and drug color design at home and abroad, and carries on the research in two phases.  In phase I, the researcher, applied the experimental investigation method through a color association survey of eight general health concepts, nine human functional systems, and twelve organ health functions to different age groups of seventy-eight research participants. The outcome provides the basic understanding of local people’s perception of the medication effectiveness and pill color.  In phase II, the researcher conducts a larger survey with 600 participants based on the outcome of phase I. The data collection and cross-analysis of variables (age, gender, and region) reveals important factors of local people’s perception of medication effectiveness related to pill color.