Intelligent Design: The Perfect Prescription

Read this feature article on New York Magazine about the redesign of the “Pill Bottle”, i.e. the bottle that doctors usually dispense drugs in.

Unlike Singapore or Malaysia, where doctors uses these little bags typically when dispensing drugs, in USA, it is almost always a little canister style bottle. Here is how it looks like (all crosslinked to the nymag site, so it might break…)

So when I found the article through Wen Yao‘s blog, I was pleasantly surprised. I don’t think they patent much about the bottle so I think the local pharmaceutical industry can take a hint or two. Some of the problems brought up are really relevant worldwide regardless of the method of delivering the pills, such as:

• How to differentiate Grandma’s pills from Daddy’s pills.
• Come to think of it – it’s quite scary: long ago my mum sometimes play doctor and feed me with dad’s fever pills to save some money in going to the doctor.
• With plastic bags, colouring them can’t be so hard. I think it would be harder to keep track of them.
• The notorious handwriting of the doctor is passed on o the nurse when I have to stare at the packet to decipher the single “floating” digit to decide how many times I have to take the pills.
• Expiry dates are non-existent sometimes.

So this is how Adler’s design for Target Pharmacy looks like, the Clear Rx system (or something like that..):

Reminds me of the new peanut butter spreads or the new Heinz tomato sauce bottles that stands on its cover 🙂 Didn’t even know that “once” is eleven in Spanish. I guess then a badly written numeral 4 in Chinese context is dangerous as it an be mistook as ten (十) in Chinese by careless patients.

Haven’t been to the doctor lately – any other cool new design?