IdentiMed

New visual guide for managing multiple medicines is ideal for patients, caregivers and healthcare providers.

125,000 people die every year as a result of medication non-compliance, so chances are your patient may be confused and overwhelmed with multiple medication schedules.

Mary Schutten, founder of IdentiMed

To address this problem, you may want to consider the IdentiMed system. It was developed by Mary Shutten of Portland, Oregon when her mother-in-law suddenly became ill and was on 22 medications at the same time.

Mary explains, “Dealing with it was like drinking out of a fire hose.” So she went to the pharmacy to look for something to manage the problem. When she couldn't find anything, Mary called on her experience as a training manager in total quality improvement at Boeing to come up with her own solution.

“Having a medication management system with a visual guide helped my mother-in-law take the right pill at the right time. Also, when someone else had to take over, it was easy for them to pick up on the regimen.”

According to Mary, “Most people are visual learners and it caught on with friends and others I knew who needed it.” One thing led to another and the system was patented in 2003.

IdentiMed is also being used as a literacy tool for health educators to communicate with patients. People can look at the pills and point out the ones they're taking.

Each kit is $24.95 plus $5.00 S&H payable by check to IdentiMed, LLC. Credit card purchases can be made on the Identimed website. If you'd like to learn more, contact Mary Schutten at:

NIH launches website for seniors

In an effort to provide reliable health information for seniors on the internet, the National Institutes of Health has launched NIHSeniorHealth.gov.

This site was developed by the National Institute on Aging and the National Library of Medicine.

According to NIH Director Dr. Elias Zerhouni, “This translation of research into everyday use is a critical part of our mission. As the nation's leading health research institution, the NIH must share what it knows with the public about keeping healthy and dealing with disease.”

The site has been designed to appeal to the special needs of seniors and avoids features that seniors find difficult to navigate. There are buttons on the home page to enlarge text and increase contrast to improve readability. The site also has a "talking" function so users can either read text or listen to it. In addition there are brief streaming videos with closed captioning on a many of the topics to enhance and add impact to the text.

NIHSeniorHealth.gov was also designed to comply with Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, which aims to make federal electronic technology accessible for persons with disabilities.

UVA Online Health Literacy Curriculum

The University of Virginia offers a comprehensive health literacy curriculum online. It includes:

• A step-by-step guide to help you get started and recognize the most common health literacy issues
• information on how UVA created their own curriculum
• a basic health literacy lecture that can be downloaded in PowerPoint or viewed in Acrobat Reader
• patient quotes
• useful links
• a health literacy bibliography

Best of all, it's free and can be found at www.healthsystem.virginia.edu/internet/som-hlc/.

Bayer Institute PREPARE Kit

Six steps to help patients get more out of their doctor's visit.

PREPARE to be Partners in Your Health Care: Six Steps to Help You Get More Out of Your Doctor's Visit is designed to help patients prepare more effectively for medical visits. It outlines ways for patients to ask better questions and interact more proactively with healthcare providers. It takes about 20 minutes and can be used while a patient is waiting to see their doctor. It includes and audio tape and a guidebook and only costs $7.00 plus $3.00 S&H. The kit can be ordered online at www.bayerinstitute.org/patient/orderguide.htm.

Unfortunately, between 30 and 50% of patients don't take their prescriptions as prescribed. There are many reasons for this but two useful forms on this site can at least help patients keep track of and better understand the medications they are using. The forms can be downloaded and copied at www.bayerinstitute.org/patient/medicalrecord.htm.

For more information you can also write to:

Great American Smokeout

The American Cancer Society (ACS) holds the Great American Smokeout® each November to help smokers quit cigarettes for at least one day, in hopes they will quit forever. This year's event will be held on November 18, 2004. For more information go to http://www.cancer.org/docroot/PED/ped_10_4.asp

The event began in the 1970s when smoking and secondhand smoke were commonplace. The idea for the Great American Smokeout came from Arthur P. Mullaney, a Massachusetts resident who asked people to give up smoking for a day in 1971 and donate the money they would have spent on tobacco to a local high school.

Learn about activities near you-or stage them yourself. Local ACS offices may provide guidance for worksite health fairs, school and shopping mall events, making a workplace smoke-free, taking on city hall, or supporting a quitter.

The CDC offers lots of excellent media event ideas at:

They also offer a sample news release and sample proclamation at:

Additonal smoking cessation resources are available at the Veterans Health Administration site at: