The aim of both the market and literature reviews is to identify existing technology for potential use to support older people with sensory impairment (OPwSI) and their carers in terms of pharmaceutical care.  Specifically we identified

1) Existing assistive technology e.g. devices, which are or could be used by OPwSI and/or their carers, to promote the safe and effective use of medicines. 

2) Devices/strategies currently used by Occupational Therapists (OTs) and pharmacy personnel to assist older people with sight and/or hearing loss and 

3) Gaps in the market. 

Alongside these reviews, we also interviewed OTs and community pharmacists to see what they use currently. Based on these interviews we constructed surveys for both community pharmacists and OTs to complete across the UK.

The surveys launched in January 2022 and are currently open for participation. They explore what kinds of technologies healthcare professionals are aware of, use, and the kinds of training they have received in terms of how to best assist older people with sensory impairment on their medicine journey. Please contact us using the details on the right side of this page, if you would like to participate!

This part of the project focuses on understanding and gathering detailed insights into the

• Daily pharmaceutical care needs of OPwSI. 

• Provision of pharmaceutical care to OPwSI. 

• Identification of education and training needs of care providers to optimise the pharmaceutical care of OPwSI. 

To gather these insights we are engaging in an observational study of the daily life of OPwSI in terms of their medicines use/pharmaceutical care i.e. to document a ‘day in the life of OPwSI’ , interviews with OPwSI and their care providers, co-production workshops involving  OPwSI, carers, health and social care professionals involved in the pharmaceutical care of OPwSI, and using web based data production/collection tools to allow people to share stories and experiences which can then be analysed to inform product and service design guidelines.

The observational study has been in progress since late summer 2021 and the co-production workshops are scheduled to begin in Spring 2022. We have had tremendous participation across Scotland in the observational study and are always interested to hear more experiences and include as many people in the observation study or workshops.

If you are, or know someone who is 65 years or older, uses 4 or more medicines a day and is either hearing and/ or visually impaired, please contact us. You can find our details on every webpage! 

The final part of this project involves the development of an online, evidence-based, systematic, multi-disciplinary educational resource for care providers to optimise the pharmaceutical care of OPwSI.

This digitally interactive educational resource will be grounded in data collected from the patient journeys from the observation study, and will include interview and video excerpts with participant permission. The educational resource will

•  value previous learning, existing knowledge and skills,
• recognise sector- and discipline-specific standards and frameworks, 
•  develop knowledge and skills in this specialist area and
• adopt a flexible approach to learning and development on pharmaceutical care for OPwSI.