Aging & Social Change: Eleventh Interdisciplinary Conference

Abstract

It was estimated that the population of 65 and above in Taiwan accounted for 14.05% of the total population in 2018, resulting in Taiwan becoming an Aged Society. Factors such as an aging population, changes in the living environment, work-related stress, and unhealthy lifestyle habits have indirectly contributed to the prevalence of chronic illnesses. One of the important tasks for chronic illness patients is to regularly take medication as instructed by physicians, aside from attending regular clinical follow-up sessions. However, it has been estimated that over 50% of chronic illness patients take at least 4 to 6 types of medications daily, which come in different sizes and sometimes colored similarly, making it difficult for patients to recognize and manage the medication properly. In this study, we explored the association between “pill shapes”, “functional pill colors” and “efficacy pill colors” of the five common types of chronic illness medication pills used by the Taiwanese population. We then investigated the possibility of designing an easily recognized, informative, and placebo-enhancing appearance of chronic illness medication pill. This study’s subjects were classified into three age intervals and were given a questionnaire survey to complete. 40 subjects were recruited from each age interval; a total of 120 effective questionnaires were collected. Our results show that subjects have different associations of pill shapes and colors to different diseases. The influencing factors could involve age interval, color association to human body function and health promotion, color association to organ health promotion, and color association to health concepts.