Patients with long-term diseases have to take up to 30 pills a day.

To take the right pill at the right time is a tough challenge for patients as well as for their caretakers.

Blive organizes and schedules this pill taking process. The package is filled in a blister center and sent directly to the patient's home. It includes their personalized pill cocktail for one week, therefore enhancing the accuracy. The preparation of the medicines is highly time consuming and prone to errors and confusions can be fatal. In Switzerland mistakes in usage of medications causes more deaths a year than traffic accidents. Blive system tackles those issues and will hopefully help patients and caretakers alike maintain a higher quality of life.

The issue

Our society is getting older and older and we are more and more relying on an advanced healthcare system. In fact, a lot of patients with long-term diseases have to take up to 30 pills a day. To take the right pill at the right time can be challenging for patients as well as for their care takers.

The inspiration and research

The inspiration of this project: My mum! She's working in a hospital and is responsible for taking care of around 15 patients. Every day she's spending around two hours to prepare the pills for her patients. This task needs her full attention because mistakes can have devastating consequences. In fact, in Switzerland there are more deaths by wrong medication than deaths by traffic accidents.

There are several reasons for this high number of mistakes.

The preparation of the medicine is usually done in a room with other nurses. That makes it difficult to focus on the job. Even though all the prepared medicines are controlled by another nurse errors and confusions occur.

As hospitals can not afford to store all required dosages of a medicine, pill have to be split in the required dosage. This is done manually by the nurses. Splitting pills is time consuming and dangerous. The active ingredient may not work the supposed way and the nurses can get in touch with highly poisonous substances.

Some numbers: In Switzerland, 2008

deaths by traffic accidents: 156

deaths by wrong medication: 200+

There is an answer to this rather risky process: Blister Centers.

Automated machines in a laboratory fill up personalized plastic bags with the pills. A camera system controls the packaged pills and ensures that every person gets the right medicine. The clients of this blister centers are hospitals. An upcoming numbers of Blister centers show the need of new ways of pill and medication distribution.

But there is still a problem with the personalized pill packaging: It is not at all user friendly. For elderly patients it is hard to open the plastic bags and the bags are easily confused.

The solution

So that's were Blive comes into play. Blive is an improved packaging system that is filled by Blister Centers. But not only should it provide a container for pills it should improve the whole customer experience. One Blive package includes the medicine for one week. It consists out of seven day sections with four compartments each day. Morning, Noon, Evening, Night. The sections can be torn apart due to the perforation in the cardboard cover. So, if the patient is going away for a day, she can tear apart the needed section. The containers itself are labeled with the name of the patient, the time, the date of the consumption, the amount and names of the pills. The container is covered with an aluminum foil with a big loop that makes it easy to open for people with limited motor abilities.

In case the patient forgets to take the pills, it is clear and obvious to her and her caretakers.

But Blive is not only made for ambulatory treatment. Blive can also be used for patients that are treated at home. The doctor sends the recipe for the patient directly to a blister center. The blister center fills up the needed pills in the Blive packaging and sends it directly to the patient's home.

Why?

Patients with long-term diseases are going through a difficult period of their life. With its simplicity and reliability Blive hopefully helps the patients to improve their life quality.