HearMe: A touch-to-speech UI for medicine identification

This article describes a medication management service concept for visually challenged older users. The service transforms medication information into speech. This can help visually challenged individuals to identify medication, and to find dosage and other consumption-related information. The user interface is based on Near Field Communication (NFC) technology, which makes it possible to write and read data in tags, which can be attached to medication packages. A speech synthesizer transforms the text stored in the tag into audio message. A complete service covering the service chain from pharmacy to user´s home was implemented and evaluated. Findings from a field trial are presented, exploring how the service was adopted in the medication management. The results show that, while the users found the service easy to learn and use, they found the service concept difficult to integrate with their existing medication management practices.