Accessible Medication Discussion with Neva Fairchild (Streaming Audio)
Transcript
Neva Fairchild: We are going to be discussing ways of marking and identifying prescription drugs. We've known for a long time that prescription drug labeling has been inaccessible for people with vision loss and it's been a common problem for many, many years. And in a recent, not too distant past, some innovations have been made including some work by the access board on coming up with best practices to share with the pharmacists and information that consumers can read and learn about what's possible.
So the inaccessibility of prescription labeling is not a new topic. But there are some new solutions out there that I thought would be interesting to the group. And you might have some solutions that we don't know about or that I don't know about. And I'd like to hear from you all as well. I want to talk about some low tech solutions at first because these are the kinds of things that people usually start with and I’m just going to go through a variety. And you might want to chime in and add some more to this such as marking one pill bottle with a rubber band and another pill bottle you don't put a rubber band on if you only have two medications. You know that the one with the rubber band. You have to develop this system yourself.
The rubber band can mean lots of things. For me, it used to mean you take two of this one. And for other people, it might be this is my morning pill and without the rubber band is my evening pill. That works until you get 12-13 medications like some of us have. It also works as long as you have good memory as to what that rubber band means to you. There's certainly no "always do this with a rubber band" rule out there. I think it always works better when the person themselves develops the system. Different Ziploc bags can work. Different places in the kitchen. I've talked to people who have morning pill and night pills. They'll put the morning pills near the coffee pot and put the evening pills on the nightstand. Then you're sure you're not taking the bedtime pills when you wake up and the morning pills when you're going to bed because that can cause havoc with people especially when one causes sleepiness and the other one causes wakefulness and you get them mixed up. That's not good. Let's see one bumped up (?) This can be handy on the bottle. I suggest that people put the markings that they're going to use on the bottle itself rather than on the cap because what happens if you take two medicines out and you get the cap mixed up and you don't know for sure which cap goes on which bottle. So whatever markings that the person is going to use need to go on the bottle, not on the cap. For some folks, having a Braille label on the medication bottle can be very helpful. Braille labels are available from some of the mail order pharmacies. These I know from Express Scripts, I'm able to get all of my prescriptions with braille labels, that not only tell me the name of the medicine but it tells me the dosage, the no. of milligrams, how many times I'm supposed to take it. Anything like the re-order number, the doctor's name, which I don't have a whole lot of trouble with that because I don't go to zillion different doctors but some people do. So anyway, that whole Braille label has a lot of great information.
But you can also make a simple Braille label if you've got someone who is only beginning to learn braille or only knows uncontracted Braille to simply put the name on there so that they can verify the name of the medicine. Other low tech solutions that you all have used with your clients or with your own life or someone you know that you'd like to share?
(Pause) Ok. My medicine organizing techniques not only has changed with my marking needs over the years but I've recently found on to a system that is basically a hybrid of the system that I used to use where I use totes to hold my medication bottles. I used to have a morning tote and an evening tote. Now, I have a twice a day tote and a morning side and an evening side on the other tote. And I've had to do that after desperation because the medicines that I was taking twice a day was not allowing me to keep all of my morning medications in one tote and all of the evening ones in another tote. It got too big and I was doubling up on bottles and it was taking up more room than it needs to.
Participant: When you are saying tote, do you mean T-O-T-E, like a bag?
Neva: Yes, only mine is, you know those tool totes that are hard plastic and have two sides to them? Sometimes you see them as shower totes or cleaning product totes. I got mine at Northern Tool and Equipment. I don't know if you can picture what I'm describing or not.
Participant: So it looks like a clear hardened plastic bag?
Neva: It is hard plastic. It's like a tray with a handle in the middle and a (I don't know what to call it) a receptacle on both sides. One side is the length of the tote and the other side is divided in half and I can get 8 bottles in each tote, maximum of the full size bottles. Now, luckily, several of my evening medications are over the counter so they are smaller bottles so I could actually get another bottle in extra on that side if I needed to but so far, I haven't had to.
Participant: So these carriers for cleaning supplies that you carry yourself?
Neva: Yes
Participant: Ok. I know what you are talking about.
Neva: Yes, exactly. Only these came from a tool hardware store so they aren’t as deep as some of the cleaning supply totes. Sometimes, they are very deep. These are probably about four inches deep. And basically, it just allows me to keep my medicines sorted so I don't have to read the label each time and so that I can easily go through and grab the ones I need for the time of day it is. I also, when I want to take the time, I know you all have seen these little compartmentalized medicine organizers. I don't find those particularly useful for people who are visually impaired to fill themselves because the little squares are so close together. It's so easy to drop the pill in the wrong square and then you end up taking two of one pill at a time when you were suppose to take only one, and none of one pill when you were supposed to have one. So I don't find them particularly useful for people who cannot see what they are dropping into each one and look down and see what the colors and that type of thing. Unless they have a family member who wants to load it up for them and still, I think they're dangerous, I'll be honest with you.
Neva: So instead of those boxy, flip open the lid medicine organizers, I use the little bathroom cups, like Dixie cups. They are very light paper and I can spread them out so I can know for sure that I am not dropping one pill twice in the same one. Now, that doesn't mean I don't accidentally drop two pills in sometimes but at least I'm aware that it's going in the same one and I can either sort it back out or if I have to because there's too many little round pills or too many capsules get somebody sighted and if I screw up on one of them then I just set it aside and start again on that day. And I do seven at a time for morning and seven at a time for evening. When I was in a situation last year where I had to have my medicine very portable and all in one Ziploc bag after it was sorted into cups, I developed a folding system for the cups so that for my morning pills, I fold the cup over straight across the top, you know, just make a flap and that I know is morning. And I do my evening ones, I fold the two corners down so it makes like a triangle on the top or a tent on the top and that's my night time pills. And I have to have what do you call them, mnemonics to help me remember things. So I think of tents to go to sleep at night and that's how I know that’s night pills. Because sometimes, you can develop a system and then you can't remember the system (laughs). Or at least, I can't sometimes. So that's kind of just a gloss over of a couple of techniques that I've developed for myself. I know people have used Velcro straps around pill bottles to note which one is which, large print labels that you stick on yourself. Unfortunately, that easily covers up the prescription label from the pharmacy and if you need that information later, it's hard. But I've known people that tell me that they've used a 20/20 pen and a file folder or address label and they write it nice and big so that they can read it and then they slap it on the bottle. Anybody else have any low-tech solutions to talk about before we get into the higher tech solutions?
Participant: This is Pat out here in Oregon. I can feed right in to that concern you brought up about the openings on the regular sized pill boxes being too small. A viable solution for that is to use a tackle box. They have flat tackle boxes, for example the kind that professional bass fisherman use. They are varying in size and some of them are quite large and they are excellent for getting rid of that problem with the hole being too small. It can be set up in different patterns, in different sequences for ease of use for the visually impaired person.
Neva: And you know, that is another good point. A lot of us take supplements and when you start getting 4 to 6 supplements in there and like the ones I take are two in the morning and two at night, and then by the way, throw a calcium pill or two in there and those little bitty medicine organizers don't hold up either.
Participant: And the tackle boxes are relatively high grade plastic, if you will. They're very sturdy. They're really inexpensive and you can get different sizes but definitely can offset that size of the whole problem that you mentioned earlier.
Neva: Good. That's a great suggestion. Ok, so, for quite a while, there have been some audio labels out there that you can attach to a medicine bottle and I'm going to start with one called Tel-Rx. This is a and if you want to see what all these look like and go on your computers to like MaxiAid or Independent Living Aid and do a search for Tel-Rx, you'll see this product. It's a little rectangular gizmo about the size of the keyfob that you used to get for your car alarm. The keyfob you get for today’s car is getting bigger and bigger. This is probably 1"x1.5"x.5". So this is definitely a small car fob size. And it's a self-recording device and it has a not too easy to see button on the long side that's flush on the side so you have to have some pretty sensitive tactile abilities to find it. And then on the front it has a slide switch that would make you think that's the thing to make it talk. That is actually the thing to make it record. So what I have found, and even with trained --- around, this thing gets unrecorded quite easily so that's one of the drawbacks. It's an inexpensive solution so that's a positive. I don't remember the price the last time I checked it. If anybody has pulled it up on the computer, you can tell us. But it attaches to the bottle, the way I attached it, it has something like a little plastic bead style tie wrap that is put through a little ring on it and then around the bottle, is one of those flat plastic tie wraps that is very sturdy so it's kind of like a double attachment mechanism.
Participant: At MaxiAid, it’s about $18.
Neva: Ok. So if you need one of these, it didn't use to be that much but you’ll need one of these for every bottle. And I'm going to try to play this but I don't know how well it would come over because the other drawback of this one is that the sound quality isn't particularly great and especially for someone with hearing problems. So I'm going to play it now.
(Plays Tel-Rx twice "Take one pill with breakfast.")
And let me try it again. Ok. So it said "Take one pill with breakfast." Now, the reason I recorded it that way is because the beauty of these self-recorded labels is that for people who do not need to know the reorder number, who aren't going to remember the name of the medication. If you said it was Dilatin, they wouldn't know what that meant. That you can simply put the instructions that they can handle and that they need to know on these self-recorded units. Ok, so that is the Tel-Rx. Another self-recording unit that's been around for a while is called Talking Rx. Now this one is a round, cylinder, about 2" tall by 1.5" round and its fits certain size bottles. I want to say its 20 and 40 gram bottles. The one that we have is the really tiny medicine bottles that you get for teeny tiny pills. And the cap actually goes up inside this device and you just kind of bend this off. And it doesn’t have a child-safe cap on it. And then you can get the pills out and because this is the heavy part, you would put the Talking Rx down at the base but you'd have to remember to put it right side up. Otherwise if you opened up the pill bottle, they would go everywhere. And the Talking RX has a self-recording capability. But the recording mechanism is hidden under where the medicine cap goes. It's a little harder to get to. You have to have a stylus, which can be an ink pen or a knitting needle or something like that to poke the button to make it record the information. So it's a whole lot harder to accidentally re-record and the only thing as with the Tel-Rx, the button that you push on this one is the only button you can get to without really trying hard, whereas the Tel-Rx, you could get to the recoding button too easily. So this one, I believe someone told me it's a red button. It's round on the side of the cylinder and very easy to feel and say "hey, that's something that I should push". And this one if you are hard of hearing and you bring this on e up to your ear as its instruction says you can do. You want to bring it up to your ear very slowly because I made the mistake when I realized that that’s their design. I put it right up to my ear and poked the button and almost deafened myself. So I'm gonna play this.
(Audio playing but unintelligible).
So which one do you think you can hear better over the phone? I realize it’s an unfair comparison. But listening to the two, which one was better understood?
Participant: the second one.
Neva: Yes, that's the case in person too. The quality of the recording is better. The limitation with this one is of course the size of bottles that it snaps on to. So if you don't have a 20 or a 40 gram bottle, then you'd have to get an empty bottle from the store or the pharmacy and transfer your medication into a bottle that would fit into this device. So that may or may not be a workable solution. This one, the last one I looked this one was about $24.95. Can you pull up Talking RX on your computer?
Participant: Yes, that one is about $30 at MaxiAid.
Neva: So that's a lot of money, especially when you take a number of medications. Now the beauty is, they are re-recordable. So if you stop taking one medication and take another or if your dose changes, it's very easy to re-record. So that's the two that has been around for a while. And while we are talking about medicines, the system in identifying a device is a dose tracking device that I want to make sure you all know about. It's called Take'n Slide. T-a-k-e-'-n S-l-i-d-e. You'll find that one vision aware too, I know. It's a little plastic strip that is concave or convex, whichever way you want to look at it, that'll fit into a round bottle and it either has 4 or 7 little plastic switches that you move from left to right depending on whether you've taken the medicine. So the 7 switch version is for a pill that you take once a day. And the way i show people how to use it is that we read from left to right so you move all the switches to the left at the beginning of the week. And you decide what the beginning of the week is for you. It probably says here on print Sunday-Monday-Tuesday but who cares about that. Nobody can see it anyway. So Monday morning is what I consider my first day of the week. So Monday morning, I take my one pill a day. Let's say this is my calcium pill. So I click my little switch from left to right, ok. And then Tuesday, I take my calcium, I move it from left to right. And the medicine stays in its original bottle. This is just a way of keeping track of "Did I take my medicine or not?" So then I come home from work on Tuesday night and I think "Oh my goodness. Did I take my pill this morning?" There's no question. I go and I look at my dose tracker and yes, the second switch, Tuesday switch is moved over to the right so I know I took it. And these switches are easy to use. You don’t need a lot of strength or tactile discrimination. But they are not so loose so you know putting it down or knocking it a little bit would cause the switch to move inadvertently. I particularly like the 4 times a day version for people who have medications they have to take four times a day. They click the switch at breakfast. They click the switch at lunch. They take their afternoon nap and they wake up from their afternoon nap and go "Oh my goodness, did I take my pills at lunch?" And they go back and they look. Yes, I did or no I didn't. And they know for sure. And they don't accidentally double dose because they can't remember if they took their pills or not. Any questions or comments about those three items so far?
Participant: Neva, what was the source you mentioned for Take'n Slide?
Neva: I believe they are available through MaxiAid for sale. I know Vision Aware has information on Take'n Slide on their prescription labeling area where we've got some mp3s that you can play to hear some of these products to kind of do what I'm doing today on your own later or if you want to show someone some options. Pris, does that have a quick URL or can you tell us how to get to that section of Vision Aware?
Pris: It doesn't have a quick URL but you can get there by though...what I'll do is when I send the information out about the calls and stuff, I can put the URL in there and like Neva said, she's done a transcript about a lot of these products and you can actually hear the device talking so you can illustrate it using that but it’s in the medication section of the everyday living skills area in Vision Aware but it just doesn’t have a quick URL.
Participant: Ok, that'll work. Thank you.
Neva: If you wanted to get to it now, there's an everyday living section where the medication section then you’ll see it in the front...
Participant: Oh, I'm not seeing it in Maxiaid in case anyone else is looking.
Participant: It's on ILA, if you google take'n slide, ILA has it. That's what MaxiAid is saying because of their lawsuit. But if you just google that there's several sources actually and ILA is one of them.
Neva: Thank you. Great. I just want to check our resource card here cause I'm pretty sure MaxiAid is on there but if they're not carrying it anymore, I need to switch our resource. So Lou mentioned some of the newer products out there that are becoming more and more widely available and for a lot of folks, this is a great solution. It's called Script Talk. It's from Envision America and Envision is spelled E-N, I think, E-N-V-I-S-I-O-N. I could be wrong. I'm a terrible speller. So if I'm wrong, somebody correct me. I'm not proud. At EnvisionAmerica.com, Script Talk is one of their products. They have a whole suite of scriptability products but Script Talk is the one that I'm most familiar with as it is most widely available. This is a little bit like the Library of Congress Program that if you use a pharmacy where Script Talk is available, the folks at Envision America will give the consumer the base for home on free loan. Ok? So go to Envision America's website and you'll see a list of all their participating pharmacies and it is growing. It really is becoming quite widely available. But the first organization that had it widely available was the VA. So any of your veterans can get Script Talk through the VA and all their medications can come with a Script Talk label. A Script Talk label is a little circle that goes on the bottom of the bottle so it doesn’t cover up the label for sighted family members to be able to read. It's about the size of a nickel. And if you feel it, you can feel there’s a little bump in it that is smaller than a grain of rice but not as small as quinoa, if that helps. It's a tiny little Rx chip and everything that is on a prescription label is sent to that RFID chip and then the Script Talk reader can read it.
Now, the Script Talk reader is about the size of a paperback with rounded corners. It has the ability to be hung on the wall so it doesn’t have to lay on the countertop if you don’t want it to be. There are two little hooks to be hung on the wall. It can run on battery or on A/C power. I should say that the Tel-Rx and the Talking RX are battery powered only. And they are replaceable batteries. I didn't think about that when I was talking about that. And then the Script Talk is also lightweight enough and portable that you could take it along if you were traveling. I don't think I would want to take it with me every day. I also wouldn't want to carry all my pill bottles with me every day. So there you have it. Although they do sell a traveling tote that goes with the Script Talk that would allow somebody who needs to take their pill bottles with them every day in a little lunch bag kind of device that is designed for the Script Talk. I'm going to turn the Script Talk on so you can listen to it so you know what to expect. (Beeping). So after it warmed up, you'll hear those two loud dings and it tells you "Script Talk Station ready". And the only buttons on the front are three rubbery buttons. One is pointing down on the left. The middle is kind of on an oval or football shape with a very tactile dot on the front of it to tempt you to push it. And the other white button is an arrow pointing up. That's on kind of on the front half closest to you. And the back half are these little bumps that tell you this is where to put your bottle so I can read it. They're very tactile like beads glued to the surface of the plastic casing. So I'm going to press that middle button that has that lovely little dot that just makes me want to push it.
Script Talk:(Ding and beeps. Patient: ---- Medication: Amoxicillin. 250 mg tablets. Instructions. Instructions. Take one tablet 3x daily with meals.)
Neva:Now I could have let it keep talking and we would have heard the whole label but I pressed the down arrow because I can stop it from reading from top to bottom. And I can arrow up and down through the information to get to what I am looking for. So what I want to know is do I have any refills. So I'm going to arrow down.
Script Talk: Prescription date: ------------ Refills remaining: 0
Neva: Uh oh, I have to call my doctor. Ok. So the nice thing about this one is that you can jump around and if you don't need to know the prescription date, you don't need to know the doctor's name, whatever, you can skip around and get to the information that you are hunting for. I neglected to say at the beginning that the on/off switch is a roller switch on the skinny edge of the device that rolls to turn it on and to control the volume so it’s very intuitive for people who are not necessarily very technically oriented. And the on/off switch, if you don't turn it off, it will go to sleep to save batteries. And then the next time you want to use it, you have to turn it off then back on to get it to work. Questions about Script Talk? Or comments about any people that you've had using it?
Participant: That's what I want to know is really how acceptable are these pharmacies really on board, how easy is it to get them on board if they're not. You know that's what’s holding me back
Neva: If you look at the Envision America website, you'll see a lot of mail-order pharmacies that are on board. There are a handful of brick and mortar pharmacies that are on board but the only thing that is going to make them grow is the consumer going to their local pharmacy and taking the information that they can get off the website or information that you give them and advocating for it to be at their local pharmacy. At the very least, their medication that they talk all the time could be marked with Script Talk through a mail-order pharmacy and their acute medication coming from the brick and mortar if they can't convince them to do it. If they go to Walgreens, they can get a talking prescription label that much like the Talking RX only Walgreens provides it for free and it sticks to every bottle and I would show it to you except the number of ---- is limited. We got one here for the center maybe two years ago and it has run out of battery and it's not replaceable, it's disposable. Because once something has been affixed to a prescription bottle at the pharmacy, it cannot be reused. It has to be replaced. So its lifespan is pretty short. But brick and mortar for talking - audible labels, again, Walgreens has them available.
Participant: To add a little bit as well, you guys. This is some information that came to our agency from an attorney who sent it out a blanket email apparently in response to a lawsuit that was going on regarding accessibility. It says dated December 4th of this year and basically, in short, it says that Script Talk is now available nationwide at all local RiteAid and Walmarts. And also large print and braille. So they also give a heads up that to be aware that you may have to educate your local RiteAid or Walmart pharmacist that their employer is now offering those accessible labels and because the companies are so large, it can take time for the local pharmacist to become aware of the new company initiatives. And then CVS is on that list. CVS/Caremart, Humana, RiteAid, as I said, United Care/Optum RX, and then Walmart. And that's from an attorney in Alabama. So that just came out before. I don't know if that'll help you guys.
Neva: I didn't realize that it was all local Walmarts now but that's good news. It's been at their mail-order Walmarts for well over a year.
Participant: Yeah, this whole problem, this whole issue has been a big deal and on people's radars for a long time so this is kind of the progress update.
Participant: Can you post that on the listserv (?)
Neva: So the fact that Script Talk is becoming more and more available is absolutely awesome. But one of the drawbacks is the synthesized voice. Many of our folks have difficulty understanding voice synthesis. Not to say that they can't get used to it. The fact that it does have controllable volume and you can plug in headphones, earphones, earbuds. You can also connect the script Talk to your computer so that the information that's on the RFID chip would go through the Script Talk into your computer so that's for deaf-blind clients who has for example, refreshable Braille access through their computer, they can also have access to that information for their prescription. All of the ins and outs and the details of this is also available on the Envision America website. I'm sure that RiteAid and Walmart and local pharmacy announcement is on Envision America. The fact that they have done this nationwide with a couple of mail-order pharmacies is pretty amazing but now that local stores have it, I just think that's miraculous, really. I'm so pleased because it really is a viable solution for a lot of people. K?
One more product that I'd like to tell you about - then I'd like to hear about products that you all might know about - is Accessamed A-C-C-E-S-S-A-M-E-D. This is a little strip of plastic about the size of a 5-piece pack of gum, Wrigley's Spearmint Gum. And it sticks to the side of the bottle, whether it's a round pill bottle or a flat side of a liquid medication bottle. There's a little spacer that allows it to stick to flat surfaces as well. And previously, you could only get Accessamed labels from purchase settings (?) pharmacy. And they were really struggling to get connected to pharmacy. Within the last couple of months, Accessamed has created a home system where for a $120, you get a little docking station, a piece of text to speech software, and ten of these little labels that you can create your own label for your medication or for your over-the-counter medicine. Ok? So prescription labels are one thing.
We know these are hard but over-the-counter medications are just as difficult for some of us especially when we don't use them very often. I never can remember if the Tylenol is the football shaped ones or is it the round ones, or is the Advil the round ones or the football shaped ones? I never can remember because I don't take them very often. And I remember one time, I went to visit my doctor in the morning and she said you need to add some iron into your diet. You're a little anemic so start taking iron pillsonce a day. And I knew I had iron pills at the house because my husband had to take them before and he happened to be out of town. And I went home and I went through a lot of medicine baskets and I'm like, I know it’s a small bottle, I know it was like this, and I found 3 bottles that could have potentially been iron pills but I could not tell which one was which because I didn't remember the actual shape of the pill. And so I had to wait the next day and bring them all to work where somebody has some eyeballs that I could show them to. Well, with Accessamed, you can program it and mark your prescriptions as well as your over the counter. I've done one of these. It's very simple but Accessamed software checks the speech software is a simple edit seal tab through the edit field and the player is good for 400 plays of the entire one minute capability. So you can put lots and lots of instructions. You can put all the details on how to reorder and what the prescription number is and all of that. But one of the drawbacks is that you can't pick and choose what you hear. You have to listen from the beginning to the end if what you want is the last piece of information on the audio label. You can stop it after you've heard the information you wanted so what I did for the one that I'd taken home to put on my Tylenol is I recorded or I typed in "Tylenol" and "500 mg" and that's the first two things it said and after I hear that, all I have to do is hit the button and it stops talking so I don't use the battery power of the 400 plays I have. I only use part of that 1 400 play. Anyway, I'm gonna play one of these and let you listen to it.
Accesamed: ----. Cough Suppresant. Take 5-10 mm every 4 hours as needed for coughing. Prescription no. 123873.
Neva: Ok, did you hear it at all?
Participant:Yes.
Neva: Ok. It's not very loud and that's one of the things that I was kind of worried about. If I hold it right out into my ear, it's very easy to hear. Another thing that I was concerned about was all of these audio things. Do I really want to be on the train and do I want to pull my medicine bottle out of my purse and play it and have it say "Oxytocin" real loud. So that the bozo sitting behind me knocks me on the head for my bottle of pills. The nice thing about this one is that it doesn’t have a headphone or an earbud plug in. If you're sitting more than 4 feet away, you're not going to be able to understand it. You may hear the hmmmmm of synthesized speech but you're not able to hear the words. So in a way, I think that's kind of good. I don't think it's going to be terribly effective for people who have hearing loss unless holding it right up to their hearing aid allows them to hear it. Now, the lovely thing is, these folks will send you one of these sample labels so you can have it in your kit to try it with people. The whole labeling system does require the ability to use a computer. But once you buy the home system, you can buy replacements or additional audio labels for $10 a piece. No, no, no, I'm sorry, $5 a piece. Ten labels with shipping is worth $50. A $5 per talking label is a pretty good bargain. Ok? You do have room for error in this device and so with the Talkiing Rx and the Tel-Rx because the person could type in the information wrong to the Accessamed or to record the information wrong and also on the Walgreens audio recorded labels. That information could be wrong. And if it's being recorded at the pharmacy, the tech that is recording it could have a deep accent. You know, English might not be their first language. And you may have trouble understanding it.
So it's important for them, the people you are helping to make aware of these solutions to help them find the solution that fits their individual needs set and that they can manage that. And they can make a system they understand and makes them into good consumers. Let's say Walgreens is their pharmacy of choice. It's right next door to the retirement community that they live in, then they are gonna use Walgreens. That's fine. Then check out the Walgreens talking label and before you walk away from the pharmacist, when you pick it up, you play it to make sure you can understand it. And if you are worried if it's accurate, ask the pharmacist to play it and read the label and make sure it's accurate. They should be doing that anyway but it can't hurt to make sure to have a double or triple check on it when there's room for error. The nice thing about the Script Talk system is that that same software that creates the print label, creates the RFID label. So if the person can understand the synthesized speech, you have less room for error with the Script Talk. Ok, I'd like to hear from you all about any other experiences that ya'll have had and any questions you have. So let's open the discussion, let's open the floor for discussion.
Participant: It would seem that the Penfriend would be easier than the latest Accesamed thing you just talked about.
Neva: You know, I'm glad you mentioned Penfriend. I missed to bring it in here. Penfriend is probably easier especially if you have one already and have someone who can record and read the label. That is an excellent solution. I should have thought to talk about that. Is everybody familiar with Penfriend or shall I describe it?
Participant: It's my understanding that Penfriend is no longer available. I think it's been replaced by, I think it's called Penfriend2.
Neva: Well, yes. They have updated it. The Penfriend, I still call it Penfriend. But yes, you are right, Pat. It has been.
Participant: Is it the same thing? Is it still the same gadget but just a newer model?
Neva: It is. It's a newer model. It's a little bit smaller. It has fewer buttons on the front but it uses the same label.
Participant:Reizen makes another one that is very similar but it's just a little cheaper.
Participant: Who makes a cheaper version?
Neva: It's a Reizen brand. R-E-I-Z-E-N. And I think they have it on MaxiAid. It's the same thing. It just kind of smells funny but it's fatter. It's a lot cheaper.
Neva: Those are both good solutions. I haven't bought the Reizen for the center yet but I have seen it. The older Penfriend had a big bubble on the top that's fat and round. This is kind of smaller and it has a flat side so it won't roll so easily and a little easier to hold, I think. The labels for that are about 10 cents a piece when you buy a kit. So they're definitely affordable once you've purchased the system.
